# The A B C of bee culture: a cyclopædia of everything pertaining to the care of the honey bee, bees, honey, hives, implements, honey plants, & c., & c. : compiled from facts gleaned from the experience of thousands of bee- keepers, all over our land, and afterward verified by practical work in our own apiary # Root, A. I. 1839-1923. # A.I. Root, # Medina, Ohio : # 1879. # # Text of original volume reproduced my Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University. # Scanning my Trigonix # OCR by Abbyy Finereader Pro 5.0 # No manual correction has been made to the OCR'd text. ######################################## THE "HOME" OF THE HONEY BEES. THE ABC OF BEE CULTURE: A CYCLOPEDIA OF EVERYTHING PERTAINING TO THE CARE OF THE HONEY BEE : BEES, HONEY, HIVES, IMPLEMENTS, HONEY PLANTS, &c., &c.: COMPILED FROM FACTS GLEANED FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF THOUSANDS OF BEE- KEEPER8, ALL OVER OUR LAND, AND AFTERWARD VERIFIED BY PRACTICAL WORK IN OUR OWN APIARY. BY A. I. ROOT. MEDINA, OHIO. A. I. ROOT. 1879. cs. * /S79 TO THE THRONGS OF EAGER, QUESTIONING, BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE * ART OF BEE CULTURE, IN OUR OWN AND OTHER COUNTRIES, THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. In preparing this work, I have been much indebted to the books of Langstroth, Quinby, Prof. Cook, King, and some others, as well as to all the Bee-Journals; but, more than to all these, have I been indebted to the thousands of friends scattered far and wide, who have so kindly furnished the fullest particulars in regard to all the new improvements, as they have come up, in our beloved branch of rural industry. Those who questioned me so much, a few years ago, are now repaying by giving me such long kind letters in answer to any inquiry I may happen to make, that I often feel ashamed to think what meager answers I have been obliged to give them under similar circumstances. A great part of this ABC book is really the work of the people, and the task that devolves on me is to collect, condense, verify, and utilize, what has been scattered through thousands of letters, for years past. My own apiary has been greatly devoted to carefully testing each new device, invention, or process, as it came up; the task has been a very pleasant one, and, if the perusal of the following pages affords you as much pleasure, I shall feel amply repaid. A, I. BOOT. Medina, Ohio, Kov., 1877. INTRODUCTION. About the year 1865, during the month of August, a swarm of bees passed overhead where we were at work, and my fellow workman, in answer to some of my inquiries respecting their habits, asked what I would give for them. I, not dreaming he could by any means call them down, offered him a dollar, and he started after them. To my astonishment, he, in a short time, returned with them hived in a rough box he had hastily picked up, and, at that moment, I commenced learning my A B C in bee-culture. Before night, I had questioned not only the bees, but every one I knew, who could tell me anything about these strange new acquaintances of mine. Our books and papers were overhauled that evening, but the little that I found only puzzled me the more, and kindled anew the desire to explore and follow out this new hobby of mine; for, dear reader, I have been all my life much given to hobbies and new projects. Farmers who had kept bees assured me that they once paid, when the country was new, but of late years they were of no profit, and every body was abandoning the business. I had some headstrong views in the matter, and in a few days I visited Cleveland, ostensibly on other business, but I had really little interest in any thing, until I could visit the book stores and look over the books on bees. I found but two, and I very quickly chose Lang-stroth. May God reward and forever bless Mr. Langstroth, for the kind and pleasant way in which he unfolds to his readers the truths and wonders of creation, to be found inside of a bee-hive. What a gold mine that book seemed to me, as I looked it over on my journey home; never was romance so enticing; • no, not even Robinson Crusoe; and best of all, right at my own home, I could live out and verify all the wonderful things told therein. Late as it was, I yet made an observatory hive, and raised queens from worker eggs before winter, and wound up by purchasing a queen of Mr. L. for $20.00. I should, in fact, have wound up the whole business, queen and all, most effectually, had it not been for some timely advice toward Christmas, from a plain practical farmer near by. With his assistance, and by the purchase of some more bees, I brought all safely through the winter. Through Mr. L., I learned of Mr. Wagner; shortly afterward he was induced to re-commence the publication of the American Bee Journal, and through this, I gave accounts monthly, of my blunders and occasional successes. Like many others, I could not be content without dabbling in patent hives, and in spite of good advice to the contrary, as soon as I was fairly started, I bought rights and thenceforth kept the most of my bees in American hives. After a trial of both kinds, the American and Langstroth, side by side, for 5 years, the combs were transferred from the American back to the L. frames. In 1867, news came across the ocean from Germany, of the honey extractor, and with the aid of a simple home-made machine, I took 1000 Ibs. of honey from 20 stocks, and increased them to 35. This made quite a sensation, and numbers embarked in the new business, but when I lost all but 11 of the 35 the r^extjwiiiter, many said, " There! I told you how it would turn out." f I said nothing, but went to work quietly, and increased the 11 to 48,^ during the one season, not using the extractor at all. The 48 were^ wintered entirely without loss, and I think it was, mainly, because I took care and pains with each individual colony. From the 48, I secured 6,162 Ibs. of extracted honey, and sold almost the entire crop for 25c. per Ib. This capped the climax, and inquiries in regard to the new industry began to come in from INTRODUCTION. all sides; beginners were eager to know what hives to adopt, and where to get honey extractors. As the hives in use seemed very poorly adapted to the use of the extractor, and as the latter machines, offered for sale, were heavy and poorly adapted to the purpose, besides being " patented," there really seemed to be no other way before me than to manufacture these implements. Unless I did this, I should be compelled to undertake a correspondence that would occupy a great part of my time, without affording any compensation of any account. The fullest directions I knew how to give for making plain simple hives, &c., were from time to time published in the A.-B. /., but the demand for further particulars were such that a circular was printed, and shortly after, a second edition, then another, and another. These were intended to answer the greater part of the queries, and from the cheering words received in regard to them, it seemed the idea was a happy one. Until 1873, all these circulars were sent out gratuitously; but at that time, it was deemed best to issue a quarterly at 25c per year, for the purpose of answering these inquiries. The very first number was received with such favor that it was immediately changed to a monthly, at 75e. The name given it was " GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE," and it was gradually enlarged until, in 1876, the price was changed to $1.00. During all this time, it has served the purpose excellently, of answering questions as they come up, both old and new, and even if some new subscriber should ask in regard to something that had been discussed at length but a short time before, it was an easy matter to refer him to, or send him the number containing the subject in question. GLEAHINGS is now about commencing its seventh year, and inquirers do not like to be referied to something that was published a half dozen years ago. Besides, the decisions that were then arrived at, may need to be considerably modified to meet the wants of the present time. Now, if we go over the whole matter again every year or two, for the benefit of those who have recently subscribed, we shall do our regular subscribers injustice, for they will justly complain that GLEANINGS is the same thing over and over again, year after year. The best time to transfer bees is in the spring; and every spring, we have been besieged with so many inquiries that we, last spring, to avoid repetition, published the whole process at length in our circular; and we have since then given away 10.000 of these, paying postage ourselves. I know those who received them felt grateful for the kindness, for many of them said so; and I know, too, that they would have willingly paid us for them, were it not for the trouble it would have been for each separate person to have remitted us 3 or 5 cents. How you can see whence the necessity for this ABC book, its office, and the place we purpose to have it fill. In writing it, I have taken pains to thoroughly post myself in regard to each subject [treated, not only by consulting all the books and Journals treating of bee-culture, which I have always ready at hand, but by going out into the fields, writing to those who can furnish information in that special direction, or by sacrificing a colony of bees, if need be, until I am perfectly satisfied. Still farther; this book is all printed from type kept constantly standing, and as the sheets are printed only so fast as wanted, any thing that is discovered, at any future time, to be an error, can be promptly righted. For the same reason, all new inventions and discoveries that may come up——they are coming up constantly——can be embodied in the wrork just as soon as they have been tested sufficiently to entitle them to a place in such a work. In other words, I purpose it to be never out of date or behind the times. Begging your pardon for this lengthy introduction, we will, with your sanction, proceed to business. Nearly two years have passed since the above was written. It is now July, 1879. The business has increased and developed so much, that we are now located on a piece of ground of 17 acres, and the picture in the front gives you a little idea of our building and surroundings. The apiaries of which you get a little glimpse, cover about 21 acres; there are seven of them, like the hexagonal apiary shown in the back of this book. The central olie has a flag in the centre of it, on which are the words, "By industry we thrive." The whole seven apiaries will accommodate 500 hives. We have, at this writing, 228 hives, mostly employed in queen rearing. Three or four boys and girls are constantly employed in rearing and shipping the queens. More are employed in making the hives and implements, and still more are at work on the journal, making this book, etc., etc. In fact, USTTBODUCTIOlSr. » there are now between 70 and 80 of us, all together. Almost every trade and industry is represented in the building and on the grounds. We have all kinds of wood work, a tin shop, carpenter shop, blacksmith shop, machine shop, printing office, book bindery, sewing room, paint shop, varnishing and japanning room, wax room where the comb foundation is made, a room where leather is worked considerably in making smokers, and we have almost everything except a grog shop. There used to be two of those a year ago, just across the rail road, but both have closed up business now. I rather suspect the atmosphere we have brought into this part of the town, was more than they could stand. If you should happen along here about noon, you would find that the engineer always stops the engine promptly at 10 minutes of noon, and that the hands then gather in the largest room in the building around an organ that they have purchased with their own money. In fact, it was purchased by each one's giving a day's work. After all join in singing a hymn, your humble servant is expected to read a verse or two from the Bible, and close the 10 minutes devotional exercise with a few brief remarks and prayer. I am often asked by visitors if this noon day service was an idea of mine. I reply that it was as unexpected to me, as to any one else. It would be a long story, to tell how it originated. God brought it about, I am firmly persuaded. Do you wonder saloons do not prosper near us? Eight over the open window at which I sit writing, is a stone bee hive which you can see in the picture. Over the hive is this inscription: "In God we trust." So long as we continue to trust in Him, and look to Him daily for help, the business will continue to prosper, and we shall be of use to ourselves, and to all those about us; but just so soon as we cease to trust in Him, the business will go down; saloons will spring up about us; and ruin and devastation will be the end. There are quite a number of us who know what it is to be frequenters of saloons, and who realize that it is by the grace of God, we are kept where we are now. "It is not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." CONTENTS. Introduction............... ........................ Absconding Swarms................................ 1 ForWantof Food.............................. 2 In Early Spring-................................. 2 Nucleus Swarms................................ 3 After Swarming ................................... 3 Age of Bees......................................... 5 , Drones............... ....... .................. 5 Queens.......................................... 5 Alighting Boards.................................. . 5 Detachable...................................... 7 How to Saw the Entrance Blocks.............. 7 Alsike Clover....................................... 7 Cultivation and Sowing the Seed.............. 7 Saving the Hay................................. 7 " Seed..................... ........... 8 Profit of ;the Crop............................... 8 Anger of Bees ...................................... 8 Ants ................................................ 10 Apiarist............................................. 11 Apiary.................. ............................ 11 Location ........................................ 11 Windbreaks................ ................... 11 Vineyard Apiary................................ 12 Lawn or Chaff Hive Apiary.................... 14 The House Apiary.............................. 15 Floating Apiary................................. 18 Hallway Apiary ................................ 18 Which Style of Apiary to Adopt............... 18 Aphides.............................................. 19 Artificial Comb..................................... 19 Artificial Fertilization.............................. 19 Artificialr;Heat...................................... 20 Artificial [Pasturage............... ................ 20 Artificial Swarming............. .................. 21 Combs of Hatching Brood...................... 21 Empty Combs for Artificial Swarming......... 23 Asters............................................... 23 Barrels............................................... 24 Leaky Barrels.................................. 24 Waxing to Prevent Leaking................... 24 Basswood........................................... 25 Bee-Bread....................... ................... 26 Bee-Dress .......................... ............... 86 Bee-Hunting........................................ 27 Box for Bee-Hunting........................... 28 How to Use the Hunting Box.................. 28 Climbers for Bee-Hunters...................... 80 Does Bee-Hunting Pay?....................... 31 Never Quarrel About Bee Trees............... 31 Bee-Moth......................... .................. 01 How to Keep Empty Combs Secure from the Moth Worms................ ........... 82 Bees................................................. 154 How Bees Grow................................. 04 Bees on Shares.......... ........................... 86 Blue Thistle......................................... 36 Borage.................. ........................... 36 Buckwheat.......................................... 37 Cultivation...................................... 37 Cages for Queens................................... 38 Candy for Bees and Queens and—Little Folks. 38 Manner of Putting the Candy in the Queen Cage........................................ 39 The BottleQueen^Cage.............. ....... ..40 How to Cage the Bees and Queen.............. Candied Honey..................;.................. Candy for Bees...................................... What Kind of Sugar to Use for Making candy Caution in Regard to Candy Making........... Catnip............................................... Cider and Cider Mills............................... Clover Comb Basket....................................... Comb Foundation................................... Foundation Machine........................... How to Make Wax Sheets...................... Boiling the Wax Sheets........................ Trimming, Squaring/and Cutting the Sheets. Carlin's Foundation Cutter............. ...... Sagging of the Foundation..................... Comb Honey....................................... Clustering on the Outside of Hives............ How to Eemove the Filled Sections....... Always Use the Tin Separators................ Marketing Comb Honey........................ Keep Clean and Free from Stickiness......... Dandelion........... ............................... Diseases of Bees............................. ...... Spring Dwindling............................... Other Diseases.................................. Dividing............................................. Division Boards..................................... Chaff Cushion for........ .............. ....... Drones........................ ..................... Rearing Out of Season................ ........ Destruction of Drones in Fall.................. Dysentery........... .............. ................ Cause............................................ Prevention...................................... Cure...:....,.................................... Agency of Aphides in Producing.............. Enemies of Bees............ ....................... Mice............................................. Parasites........................................ Skunks.......................................... Spiders....................t...................... Wasps........................................... Thieves and Patent Right Venders............ Entrances to Hives................................. Size of........................................... Extracted Honey................................... How to Sell...................................... How to Keep............... .................;. Extractor.............. ............................ How to Make.................................... Making the Can................................ Extracting from Broken Pieces of Comb or from Section Boxes........................ Extractor for Piecessof Comb.................. Feeding and Feeders ............................... What to Feed................................... How to Feed.................................... How to Make the Syrup ....................... Feeding Fast or Slowly......................... When to Feed................................... Simplicity Feeder......................... ..... Feeding to Produce Comb Honey.............. Caution in Regard to Feeding... ............. Hains' Feeder for a Fruit Jar............ ..... COKTEKTS. The Dunham Feeder............................ 77 Fertile Workers................................... 78 Cause............. .............................. 78 How to Get Bid of.............................. 78 How to Detect the Presence of............... 79 Pig-wort............................................. 79 Foul Brood.......................................... 80 .Remedies ....................................... 81 Cause............................................ 81 Fruit Blossoms...................................... 82 Bo Bees Injure the Fruit by Taking Honey from the Blossoms?......................... 82 Gill-over-the-ground................................ 83 Golden Bod... ..................................... as Hive Making.............. ......................... 85 How to Make a Simplicity Hive................ 85 Gauge for Planing Lumber.................... 86 Improperly and Properly Filed Saws.......... 87 Setting the Parallel Bar..... ................ . 87 Why Boards Warp.............................. 87 Beveling Platform.............................. 88 Iron Gauge Frames for Hive Making.......... 88 How to Set the Cross Cut Bar.................. 89 Taking off the Strip Under the Cover ......... 90 How to Make the Covers....................... 91 Nailing Hives................................... 91 Simplicity Langstroth Hive.................... 92 Covers to Hives................................. 92 The Story and a Half Hive..................... 92 Combined Shipping Case and Honey Crate.... 93 How to Make the Chaff Hive................... 93 Frames for Hives................ ............. 97 How Many Frames in a Hive..... ............. 99 What to Cover Frames With................... 99 How to Use the Broad Frames of Section Boxes ......... .............................100 Painting the Hives.............................101 Concluding Remarks About Hives.............101 Section Honey Boxes...........................102 All About Making Them, and Some Other Matters....................... .. 102 Saws, Filing and Setting....................106 Home Made Section Boxes.................108 HoneyComb................. ........ ... .........109 Why the Cells are Made Six Sided......... ... 109 Mathematics of the Honey Comb.............. 110 Different Kinds of Cells........................ Ill How the Bees Build the Comb.................112 Honey Dew.........................................114 Hybrids.............................................115 Introducing Queens................................117 How to Find and Remove the Old Queen..... .117 How to Release the Queen............ ........118 ItalianB«es....................................... .119 Italianizing.........................................122 King Birds..........................................124 Lamp Nursery......................................125 How to Get Cells for the Nursery..............125 How to Avoid Having any Worker Bees in the Nursery........ . ......................126 Introducing Virgin Queens.................... 126 Locust........ ......................................128 Mtgnonnette........................................ 129 Milkweed................................. ..........129 Motherwort....................................... ..129 Moving Bees........................................130 M ustard............................................132 Nucleus............................................133 Poisonous Honey.................................. 136 Pollen................................................136 Necessity of Pollen for Brood Rearing........138 Artificial Substitutes for Pollen............... 139 Agency of Bees in Fertilizing Plants by Mingling the Pollen........................ .140 Pollen in Section Boxes and Comb Honey.... .144 Portico for Hives................... ... ...........145 Propolis.............................................145 Mow to Keep from Surplus Honey............ 146 How to Remove from Fingers..................146 Do the Bees Need Propolis.....................146 Value of Propolis...............................147 Queens..............................................148 Imperfectly Developed........................148 How a Worker Bgg is Made to Produce a Queen.......................................148 Royal Jelly...................... ...............149 What Does the Queen do While Sealed Up?.. .150 Davis' Transposition Process....... ..........150 What Becomes of the Queen after She Gets Out of the Cell f............................. 150 Queens' Voices.................x..............152 Virgin -Queens..................................152 Age at Whieh Virgin Queens Take Their Wedding Flight................ ............153 The Meeting Between the Queen and Drone.. 154 Shall We Clip the Queens' Wings?.............156 Clipping Queens' Wings........................156 How Queens Lay Two Kinds of Eggs.... .... .156 Loss of Queen...................................158 Odor of a Laying Queen................ .......158 Queens' Stings .................................159 Caution in Regard to Deciding a Stock to be Queenless.... ...........................159 Caution About Clipping Queens' Wings.......159 Queen Rearing.....................................159 How to get Good Queen Cells..................160 How to Insert a Queen Cell................... .161 Caution......................................... 162 Rape. .165 Raspberry...........................................165 Ratan ............................................. 165 Robbing.............................................165 Colonies that Will Make no Defense...........168 How to Know Robber Bees............. ......168 How to Tell Where the Robbers Belong.......168 How to Stop Robbers...........................168 What Happens if Robbing is not Stopped.... .170 Prevention of Robbing......................... 171 A Great Discovery............................ .172 Rocky Mountain Bee Plant........................173 175 Smokers............................................ .176 Corn-popper Smoker...........................177 Townley's Smoker............... ..............177 Fuel for Smokers...............................177 Simplicity Smoker....................... ......178 Cold Blast Smoker.............................. 179 Clark's Cold Blast Smoker.....................181 Soldering.........................,..........;...... .182 Hains' Feeder................................ . .183 Sourwood ........ ..................................183 Solder Flower......................................184 Stinsrs... ....................... ...................185 To Remove......... ............................185 Remedies.......................................186 What to Do When Stung a Great Number of Times, all at Once........ ..............187 Getting Hardened to the Effects of Bee Stings. 187 How to Avoid Being Stung..................... 187 How to Open a Hive Without Being Stung.... 188 Our Simplicity Comb Holder...................189 Valentine's Queen Stand... ........... .......189 An Easel to Hold Combs.......................189 Simplicity Comb Holder...... .................190 What Kind of Bees Sting Worst...............190 The Bee Sting Poison ............ . ........'...190 Odor of the Bee Sting Poison,.................191 How it is Done..................................191 Does the Bee Die After Losing His Sting?.... .191 Smoke not Always a Preventive of Bee Stings.192 Mechanical Construction and Operation of the Sting....... ...........................192 Sumac.............. ....... .......................194 Sunflower...........................................194 Swarming.................................. ........194 Why Bees Swarm...............................195 At What Season Bees Usually Swarm.........195 Symptoms of Swarming....................... .196 Is ever Allow the Bees to Hang Outside the Hive.... ....................................196 Preparations for Swarming to be Made by the Bee-Keeper.............................197 Repository for Swarming Implements ....... .198 How to Hive a Swarm of Bees................. 198 Hiving Bees by Machinery.....................200 Two or More Swarms Coming Out and Uniting......................................200 Prevention of Swarming.......................201 Prevention of Swarming by Use of Extractor .202 Keeping Bees in Upper Rooms and Garrets . .202 Do Bees Choose a Location Before Swarming?. 203 Decoy Hives.....................................203 Automatic Swarming...........................203 Ringing Bells and Beating Pans to Bring Down a Swarm of Bees.....................204 Natural Swarming and its Attendant Clustering .......................................205 Teasel.... ................................... ......208 $oads............................................... 209 Transferring........................................209 When to Transfer .......................... ..210 Appliances for Fastening in the Combs . ...211 How Much of the Combs in the Old Hives Should be Saved........................... ,211 Turnip................ ..............................214 Uniting Bees.......................................213 What to Do witM the" Queens...................213 Uniting New Swarms...........................214 Uniting Bees in the Spring.................... 214 Veils...... .................... ..................215 Ventilation.........................................216 Smothering Bees by Closing the Entrance... .216 How the Bees do Their Own Ventilating..... ,217 Ventilating Queen Cages During Shipment.. .217 Vinegar ...............*........................... .217 Water for Bees.... ....... .........................219 Improvement on the Above...................220 Fountain for Giving Bees Access to Water.. .222 Salt Water for Bees ............................223 Wax.................................................222 Wax Extractor.................................222 Our Own Way of Rendering Wax.............225 Cleaning Wax From Utensils..................226 Adulteration of Wax..........................228 Whitewood............ .............................229 Wintering....... ...................................230 When to Commence Preparing the Bees for Winter................... ..............231 Ventilation and its Relation to Frost and Dampness...................................231 How Bee Hives Become Damp.................23£ Straw Hives........................ ............233 Chaff Cushions and How to Make Them.......233 Wintering in Cellars or Special Repositories. .238 How to Get Rid of Dampness and Secure Perfect Ventilation in Cellars.......... .. .239 Preparing Stocks for Their Winter Quarters. .240 Time of Putting the Bees into the Cellar..... .240 Shall Bees be Confined to Their Hives When Put In-doors.........................240 Best Temperature for a Cellar or Bee House.241 Removing the Bees from the Cellar...........241 Advantages of Cellar Wintering...............241 Number of Colonies to be Put into One Room or Cellar..............................241 Summing up the Matter of Wintering. .......241 Spring Dwindling...............................241 Its Cure...................... ..............243 Conclusion................................... ......245 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 1. The "Home" of the Honey Bees... .Frontispiece 2. Alighting Board, Detachable................ .^6 3. Entrance Blocks................. ............ 7 4. Grape Trellis.................................. IS 5. The Vineyard Apiary, and "Swarming1" the Grape Vines.............................. 13 6. The Lawn or Chaff Hive'Apiary.............. 14 7. A Modern House Apiary..................... 15 8. Diagram of Interior of House Apiary. ......*16 9. J. H. Townley's Chaff Hive Apiary........... 18 10. A. A. Bice's Apiary...........................J18 11. Aster ......................................... 23 12. American Linden or Basswood............... 26 13. Box for Bee Hunting......................... 28 14. Climbers for Bee Hunting.................... 30 15. From the tigg to the Bee..................... 34 16. Manner of Putting the Candy in the Queen Cage....................................... 39 17. Queen Cage Complete........................ 39 18. The Bottle Queen Cage....................... 40 19. Manner of Resting the Frame................ 40 20. Comb Basket.................................. 44 21. Foundation Machine; 12 inch Rolls.......... 44 22. Foundation Machine: 5 inch Rolls........... 45 23. Frames for Cutting {Sheets for Brood Frames 46 24. Carlin' s Foundation Cutter................... 47 25. Rest for Section Frame....................... 49 26. Section Box Filled with Honey............... 49 27. Case for Storing and Shipping Honey........ 50 28. Bottoms of Cells.............................. 52 29. J. Archer's Bee Ranche, Cal.................. 52 30. Chaff Cushion Division Board................ 56 31. Drone Bee..................................... 57 32. Inside of Extractor........................... 70 33. Extractor Complete........................... 70 34. Extractor for Pieces^f Comb................ 72 35. Simplicity Bee Feeder........................ 75 36. Feeder....................................,.... 77 37. Hams' Feeder................................. 77 38. Dunham Feeder............................... 78 39. My Improvement............................. 78 40. Simpson Honey PJant......................... 79 41. Gill-o ver-the-groind.......................... 83 42. The Lawn or Chaff Hive...................... 85 43. Gauge for Planing Lumber................... 86 4'. Setting Parallel Bar............................ 87 45. Why Boards Warp............................ 87 46. Side and End View of Board................. 88 47. Beveling Platform......................... 88 48. Iron Gauge Frames for Hive Making........ 88 49. How to Set the Cross Cut Bar................ 89 50. Hive Set up with Gauge Frame.............. 89 51. Taking off Strips Under the Cover........... 90 52. Cross Section of Ends......................... 90 53. Washer for "Wabbling" Saw................. 90 54. Parts of the Cover............................ 91 55. Iron Smoothing Plane........................ 91 56. Corner Joint................................... 92 57. Langstroth Hive to Take a Simplicity Up per Story.................................. 92 58. The Story and a Half Hive................... 92 59. Shipping Case and Honey Crate for Story and a Half Hive........................... 93 60. Stuff Cut for Siding................. .........93 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. •88. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. Platform for Giving the Siding the Proper Bevel...................................... 93 Pieces.......................................... 94 Corner Posts................................... 94 Shell and Posts of Chaff Hive................. 94 Pieces.......................................... 94 Frame that Holds the Cover.................. 95 Entrance Way................................. 95 Side of Chaff Hive............................. 95 Diagram of Chaff Hive ....................... 95 Cover to Chaff Hive........................... 96 Roof Board to Chaff Hive.................... 96 Ridge Board................................... 96 Roof Boards to Chaff Hive.................... 97 Gable End to Chaff Hive Cover............... 97 How to Make the Gable Ends ................ 97 Gauge for Frame Making..................... 98 Corner of Frame.............................. 98 Dove-tailed Frame........................ ,.. 99 Different Parts................................ 99 Mat for Covering the Frames................100 Frames of Sections Wedged up..............100 To Test a Square..............................101 Cigar Box Planer..............................102 Clamp for Making Section Boxes............103 Bundle of Strips for Sections................ 103 Bolt of Strips Ready for Planing the Edges.. 103 Lilliputian Planer.............................103 Bundle of Pieces for Section Boxes as They Leave the Saws.....................103 One Pound Section Box Complete.......... .104 Bundle of Top Bars...........................104 Bundle of End Bars...........................104 Broad Frame to Hold 8 Sections, and Tin Separators ................................104 Frame Filled with Sections of Honey........104 Cutter Head...................................105 Saw Properly and Improperly Filed.........106 Teeth of Saw..................................107 File............................................107 Saw Set........................................107 Philosophy of Setting a Saw..................107 "Home Made" Machine for Making Section Boxes......................................108 Cells of Comb..................................109 Bottom of Cells................................109 Bottom of Cell................................. 109 Mathematics of the Honey Comb............ .110 Rhombic Dodecahedron....... H.............. 110 Drone and Worker Comb.....................112 Italian Bee....................................121 Lamp Nursery................................125 Pollen of the Milk Weed Attached to a Bee's Foot.................................129 Mother Wort..................................129 Top View of Gallup and Langstroth Hivefl..l34 Clark's Rustic Chaff Hive....................135 Three Frame Nucleus Hive..................135 How the Bees Get the Pollen from the Flowers ............... ...................137 Pollen Basket................................. 137 Ragweed and Corn............................140 Touch Me Not.................................141 Portico.............................. ..........145 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 119. Queen Cells.................................... 149 120. Queen Cell Torn Open........................151 121. Drone..........................................152 122. Queen..........................................152 123. Worker........................................152 124. Virgin Queen..................................153 125. Cutting Out Queen Cell..................... ..162 126. Boeky Mountain Bee Plant...................178 127. Cal. W hite Mountain Sage.................... 175 128. Townley's Smoker............................177 129. Simplicity Smoker............................178 130. Boards for Bellows............................179 131. Making the Bellows....................I......ISO 132. Smoker Dissected.............................180 133. Simplicity Cold Blast Smoker................180 134. Corey's Cold Blast Smoker...................181 135. dark's Cold Blast Smoker....................181 136. Soldering Board...............................182 137. Soldering Implements........................183 138. Hains' Feeder.................................183 139* Sourwood...................................... 184 140. Simplicity Comb Holder......................189 141. Valentine's Queen Stand.....................189 142. An Basel to Hold Combs......................189 143. Simplicity Comb Holder......................190 144. BeeSting Magnified..........................193 145. Shepard's Hiving Box........................197 146. Kepository for Swarming Implements.......198 147. Implement for "Bagging" Swarms..........198 148. Swarm on a High Limb.......................200 149. .Tackel's Machine for Taking Down Swarms.200 150. Whitman's Fountain Pump................. .205 151. Teasel.........................................208 152. Manner of Using Transferring ^ Clasps, 1 Wires and Sticks..........................211 153. Wire Cloth and Lace Bee Veils............... 215 154. Open Air Feeder..............................221 155. Fountain for Bees.............................222 156. Gerster Wax Extractor.......................224 157. Leaf, Bud and Blossom of Whitewood or Tulip Tree.................................230 158. Chaff Cushions................................233 159. An Experience that "Blessed Bees" Didn't TeU of.....................................243 160. Hexagonal Apiary........................... .246 161. A House Apiary for 20 Hives..... ............18 162. A Part of Our Own Original Hexagonal 0 Apiary...................................... 18 163. A California Apiary, near San Diego.......... 62 164. Cogs well's Apiary, Los Angelos Co., Cal.... .116 THE A B C OF BEE CULTURE. SWARMS. IVr haps nothing is more aggravating in bee culture, than to have your bees all on a sudden " light out" for parts unknown, without so much as stopping to give you a parting word of farewell, or a single token of recognition of the debt they owe you, in the shape of gratitude for your past kindnesses in providing them with a home, shelter, &c. Perhaps no part of animated creation exhibits a greater love of home, than does the honey bee ; no matter how humble or uninviting the surroundings, they seem much attached to their home, and as they parade in front of their door-way after a hard day's work, plainly indicate that they have a keen idea of the rights of ownership, and exhibit a willingness to give their lives freely, if need be, in defence of their hard earned stores. It is difficult to understand how they can ever be willing to abandon it all, and with such sudden impulse, and common consent. No matter if they have never seen or heard of such a thing as a hollow tree, but have for innumerable bee generations been domesticated in hives made by human hands, none the less have they that instinctive longing that prompts them to seek the forest, as soon as they get loose from the chains of domestication. It is possible that the bees, as they go out foraging, keep an eye out for desirable places for starting new homes, and it may be that they have the hollow trees picked out some time before they decide to leave. Many incidents have been reported that pretty clearly show this to be the case. We once found our bees working strongly on a particular locality about a mile and a half from the apiary, where the white clover was blooming with most unusual luxuriance. Very soon after, a colony swarmed, and the bees, after pouring out of the hive, took a direct line for a tree in this clover field, without so much as making any attempt to cluster at all. Did they not figure out the advantage of having only a few rods instead of over a mile to carry their honey, after having patiently gathered it from the blossoms, little by little ? Perhaps it will be well to remark here, that it is very unusual for a swarm to go to the woods without clustering; they usually hang from 15 minutes to an hour, and many times several hours ; in fact, we have known them to hang over night; but perhaps it would be well to take care of them inside of 15 or 20 minutes, if we would make sure of them. Long before swarming time, hives should all be in readiness, and they should also be located just where the new colony is to stand, with the sawdust, grape vines, or whatever we decide to have, all in nice trim. If you are going to have % model apiary, please do not think of waiting until the bees swarm, before you lay it out, but take time by the forelock, and with careful deliberation, decide where every hive shall be before it is peopled with bees, if you wish to keep ahead and keep your bees from taking "French leave." But they sometimes go off even after they hate been carefully hived, some will say. We are well aware they do often go off after being hived, sometimes the same, and sometimes the next day; but are you sure the hiving was carefully done? We never feel satisfied unless we have given the new swarm at least one comb containing unsealed brood, and we have never had a swarm desert a hive when thus furnished, nor have we ever heard of one's doing so. With such hives as we shall describe, it is a very simple task, and takes but a minute to open a hive and get such a comb. And besides, if by any chance you should fail to get the queen when you hive the swarm, they would be supplied with the means of rearing another. This plan of giving them unsealed brood ABSCOOTHHG SWAEMS. ABSCONDING SWAEMS. does very well, if you can once get them into the hive, but it is necessarily somewhat like the one of catching birds with a handful of salt; how are we to obviate losing the occasional swarm that goes off without clustering at all ? or the quite frequent cases of coming out unobserved or when no one is at home V We are happy to say there is a very certain and sure remedy, for all cases of first swarming, in having the wings of the queen clipped so she can not fly; this plan is in very general use and answers excellently for all flrst swarms; but alas, the after swarms are the very ones that are most apt to abscond, and we can not clip the wings of tJmr queens, because they have not yet taken their wedding flight. What shall we do V Candidly, I don't know of any better way than to watch carefully when they are to be expected, and then chase after them, climb trees, &c., until they are once got safely into a hive. If you think this too much trouble, prevent having after swarms as we have advised under that head. Clipping the wings of the qtieen prevents losing first swarms by absconding, it is true, but it does not always prevent losing the queen. She goes out with the bees as usual, and, after hopping about in front of the hive, sometimes gets ready to go back at about the same time that the bees do, after having discovered she is not in the crowd. Even if she gets some little distance from the hive, the loud hum they make as they return, will guide her home many times, but unless the apiarist is at hand at such times to look after affairs, many queens will be lost, and the bees will rear a lot of young queens and go into after swarming in good earnest, making even the flrst swarm an "after swarm." A German friend, who knows little of bee culture, once told me my bees were swarming, and if I did not ring the bells, &c., they would certainly go to the woods. As I quietly picked up the queen in passing the hive, I told him if they started to go away, I would call them back. Sure CfMOtigh, they did start for the woods, and had gone so far that I really began to be frightened myself, when, away in the distance, we saw them suddenly wheel about, and then return to the hive at our very feet. While he gave me credit of having some supernatural power over bees, I felt extremely glad I had taken precautions to clip all our queens' wings but a few days before. After this, I, felt a little proud of my control over these wayward insects, until a fine swarm of Italians started off tinder similar circum- stances, and despite my very complacent positive remarks, to the effect that they would soon come home, they went off and staid "off." In a humbler, and I dare say, wiser frame of mind, I "investigated," and found they had joined with a very small third swarm of black bees, that had just come from one of a neighbor's hives. I tried to " explain," but it required a five dollar bill to make matters so clear, that I could carry back my rousing swarm of yellow bees, and sort out the black unfertile queen, that they might be made to accept their own. Thus you see, my friends, how many a slip there is, in bee culture, between cup and lip, and how very important it is that you keep posted and also "post" yourself in some conspicuous place near or in the apiary if you allow natural swarming, and do not want your golden visions—and bees —to take to themselves wings and fly away. ABSCONDING FOB WANT OF FOOD. Perhaps bees oftener desert their hives because they are short of stores, than from any other cause; and, many times in the spring, they seem to desert because they are nearly out. The remedy, or rather preventive for this state of affairs, is so plain, that we need hardly discuss it. After they have swarmed out, and are put back into the hive, give them a heavy comb of sealed stores if you can; if not, feed them a little | at a time, until they have plenty, and be | sure that they have brood in the combs. If necessary, give them a comb of unsealed larvse from some other hive, and then feed | them until they have a great abundance of I food. You should be ashamed of having I bees abscond for want of food. | ABSCONDING IN EARLY SPRING. I This seems to occur just at a time when I you can ill afford to lose a single bee; and worse still, only when our stocks are, generally, rather weak, so that we dislike the idea of losing,any of them. In this case they do not, as a general thing, seem to care particularly for going to the woods, but rather take a fancy to pushing their way into some of the adjoining hives, and at times, a whole apiary will seem so crazy with the idea, as to become utterly demoralized. A neighbor, who made a hobby of small hives—less than half the usual size—one fine April day, had as many as 40 colonies leave their hives and cluster together in all sorts of promiscuous combinations. To say that their owner was perplexed, would be stating the matter very mildly. ABSCONDING SWARMS. Similar cases, though perhaps not as bad, have been reported from time to time, ever since novices commenced to learn the science of bee culture, and although cases of swarming out in the spring were known once in a great while before the new improvements, they were nothing like the mania that has seemed to possess entire apiaries—small ones—since the time of artificial swarming, honey extractors, &c. We would by no means discourage these improvements, but only warn beginners against making too much haste to be rich. Do not divide or commence swarming your bees, until they are abundantly strong ; have them go into winter quarters with an abundance of sealed honey in tough old combs as far as may be; give them hives with walls thick and warm, of some porous material, such as chaff or straw, with a good thickness of the same above ; and you will have little cause to fear any trouble from bees absconding in in the spring. ABSCONDING NUCLEUS SWARMS. This, like the above, seems an outgrowth of the artificial system of working writh bees, especially the plan of rearing queens in nuclei formed of two or three frames five or six inches square. This small hive, system was much in vogue about the year 1865. For awhile all worked finely, but soon complaints began to be heard that the bees left their hives in a body, with the queen, whenever she attempted to take her flight toineet the drones. Giving them unsealed larvae, to amuse and console themselves writh while she was absent, was then advised, and it answered very well for a time, but eventually one after another began to [declare they wanted no frame in the apiary for queen rearing, smaller than the ordinary brood frame. Since this, but little has been heard in the way of complaints of this kind of absconding. Where one has the time to study these ] it tie swarms, there is something very interesting and amusing about them. We have had them do finely for~several weeks, with perhaps no more than a good pint of bees. A good day's work, during clover bloom, would fill the hive completely, and the young queen, after commencing to lay, would often fill the combs by her second day's work; then if she turned up missing on the third day, we used to wonder what in the world was the matter. Sometimes these little swarms would be found hanging on a currant or raspberry bush, as quietly and demurely as if that was the way bees always did; at other times, when we had hunted AFTER SWARMING. through all available places for a truant colony, and given them up in despair, they would come circling back and cluster quietly almost under our very (inexperienced) noses. * There is still another kind of absconding that seems to be for no other reason than that the bees are displeased with their hive, or its surroundings, and, at times, it seems rather difficult to assign any good reason for their having suddenly deserted. We have knowrn a colony to swarm out and desert their hive because it was too cold and open, and we have known them to desert because the combs were soiled and filthy from dysentery in the spring. They very often swarm out, because they are out of stores, and this generally happens about the first day in spring that is sufficiently warm and sunny. We have known them to swarm out because their entrance was too large, and, if we are not mistaken, because it was too small. We have also known them to swarm out because they were so "pestered" with a neighboring ant hill—SEE ANTS—-that they evidently thought patience ceased to be a virtue. Many times, they swarm out in spring where no cause can be assigned than that they are weak and discouraged, and, in such cases they usually try to make their way into other colonies. While it may not always be possible to assign a reason for such behavior with medium or fair colonies, we may rest assured that good strong colonies, with ample supplies of sealed stores, seldom, if ever, go into any such foolishness. By way of summing up, it may be well to say : if you would not lose your bees by natural swarming, clip the wings of all queens as soon as they commence laying, then look to them often, and know what is going on in the apiary every day during the swarming season; if you would not have runaway swarms in the spring, and while queens are being fertilized, confine your experiments to pecks of bees instead of pints. AFTER SWARMING. W< might define this by saying that all swarrns that come out, or are led out by a VIRGIN QUEEN, are termed after swarms; and all swarms that come out within ten or fifteen days after the first swarm, are accompanied by such queens. There may be from one all the way up to a half dozen or even more, depending on the yield of honey, amount of brood or larvse, and the weather; but whatever the number, they are all led off by queens reared from one lot of queen cells, and the number of bees accompanying them, is, of a necessity, less each time. The last one frequently contains no more than a pint of bees, and, if hived in the old way, would be of little use under almost any circumstances; yet when supplied with combs already built and filled with honey, such as every enlightened apiarist should always keep in store, they may be made the very best of colonies, for they have young and vigorous queens, and often are equal to any in the apiary, the next season. This after swarming is often considered a great nuisance, or misfortune ; but where bees can be sold, at even tolerable figures, we would advise taking care of all that may come out in the manner indicated. In fact we know of no easier or simpler way of raising bees, but unless the apiary and bees in the vicinity are pretty thoroughly Italianized, there is much greater risk of getting poor hybrids, than by the different ways of artificial swarming, | where we rear our queen cells from choice selected brood. There is one very amusing feature in regard to these after swarms. When they have decided to send out no more swarms, all the young queens in the hive are sent out, or it may be, allowed to go out with the last one, and every few days during the swarming season, some "new hand" writes us about the wonderful fact of'his having found three or four, or it may be a half dozen queens in one swarm. On one occasion, a friend, who weighed something over 200, ascended to the top of an apple tree during a hot July day, to hive a very small third swarm. He soon came down, in breathless haste, to inform us that the swarm was all queens, and in proof of it, brought two or three in his closed up hands. The queens, with these after swarms, seldom lay in the drone cells at all the first season, and the bees therefore build almost entirely worker comb, which is additional reason for taking care of them, and supplying them with stores from other colonies. However, we would advise as a general rule, preventing too much after swarming if it can be done without much trouble ; but, if they will come out in spite of all we can do, take care of them in the manner indicated. While first swarms usually come out in the middle of the day, and take things In a regular, methodical way, as indeed we might expect a laying queen of age and experience to do, these after swarms, that have queens not yet fertilized, are to be looked for at almost any time of day, from early in the morning, until after sundown, and they may AFTER SWARMIHG. also be expected to do all sorts of eccentric things, and to cluster in all sorts of places, or to go off into the woods without clustering at all. Preventing after swarming can generally be accomplished at least temporarily, by cutting out all queen cells but one, after the old queen with the first swarm has left. There are two objections to this plan however. The first is that, if the single cell left fails to produce a perfect queen, the colony is left queenless. The second is that they will som3times—especially the Italians—swarm out with the only queen left, leaving the colony hopelessly queenless. With the extractor, or by the use of empty combs, we can almost invariably keep down the swarming fever, but if wre work entirely for comb honey, even if the boxes are all supplied with foundation, we must expect to have more or less swarming. With box hives, perhaps the best we can do, is to hive the after swarms near the old stock, and let them set until the next day; by this time all the queens will have been killed but one, and we can then kill her, shake the bees in front of their old hive, and all will be " lovely," or about as nearly so as things ever are with box hives. Giving the old swarm a young fertile queen as soon as the first swarm has left, will usually prevent all second swarming, at least for the time being, for the laying queen will soon destroy all queen cells, or induce the bees to do so. A simpler method, and one that wre believe succeeds almost invariably, is to move the old colony away as soon as the first swarm is out, and set the new one on the same stand. This has the effect of getting all the flying bees into the new swarm, and leaving the old one so destitute, that the queen that hatches first is allowed to destroy all the rest of the cells. By this plan, we are spared the trouble of opening the hive, but are obliged to carry each hive to a new stand as soon as it has swarmed. If the queen's wing is clipped, and we are at hand, we can manage swarming by this method very expeditiously. As soon as they commence swarming, pick up the queen and carry away the hive they are coming out of; place the new one in its stead and as soon as the bees commence coming back to look for her, put the queen among them, and your hive is swarmed without their clustering at all. This plan works excellently, and the bees go right to work apparently as perfectly satisfied as if they had clustered in the usual way. The only objection is that an inexperienced person might not find the AGE OF BEES. 5 queen readily, and she might be lost; also, we are obliged to be on hand or risK losing our queens. It should be borne in mind that a swarm that issues a month or more after the first swarming, is not to be considered an after swarm; for in this case it will be led out by a laying queen, or one that is old, compared with the queens just hatching. In regard to the oft repeated advice to prevent after swarming by removing all queen cells but one, it may be well to say that the Italians frequently swarm without constructing queen cells at all, and the beginner is sadly puzzled at finding nothing of the kind when he looks his hive over. Also, we may have several after swarms without having any first swarm at all, where the queen is killed or removed by accident. We once had a box hive neighbor who was so much taken up with an observatory hive he saw at our house ,that he at once went home and made one, and to get the bees, drummed out about a quart from one of his hives. lie got the queen, and had a very fine one comb hive in his parlor, but in a few days, the box hive she came from, commenced swarming, and furnished him with more queens and small colonies than he knew what to do with. AG33 OH" BXSES.—It may be rather difficult to decide how long a worker bee would live, if kept from wearing itself out by the active labors of the field ; six months certainly, and perhaps a year; but the average life during the summer time is not over three months, and perhaps during the height of the clover bloom, not over six or eight weeks. The matter is easily determined, by introducing an Italian queen to a hive of black bees, at different periods of the year. If done in May or June, we shall have all Italians in the fall and if we note when the last black bees hatch out, and the time when no black bees are to be found in the colony, we shall have a pretty accurate idea of the age of the blacks. The Italians will perhaps hold out under the same circumstances, a half longer. If we introduce the Italian queen in September, we shall find black bees in the hive until the month of May following—they may disappear a little earlier, or may be found some later, depending upon the time they commence to rear brood largely. The bees will live considerably longer if no brood is reared, as has been several times demonstrated in the case of strong queenless colonies. It is also pretty well established that black bees will live longer in the spring than Italians; probably because the latter are more inclined to push ALIGHTING BOARDS. out into the fields when the weather is too cool for them to do so with safety; they seldom do this however, unless a large amount of brood is on hand, and they are suffering for pollen or water. During the summer months, the life of the worker bee is probably cut short by the wearing out of its wings, and we may, at the close of a warm day, find hundreds of these heavily laden, ragged winged veterans making their way into the hives slowly and painfully, compared with the nimble and perfect winged young bees. If we examine the ground around the apiary at nightfall, we may see numbers of these hopping about on the ground, evidently recognizing their own inability to be of any farther use to the community. We have repeatedly picked them up, and placed them in the entrance, but they usually seem only bent on crawling and hopping off out of the way, where they can die without hindering the teeming rising generation. AGE OF DRONES. It is somewhat difficult to decide upon the age of drones, because the poor fellows are so often hustled out of the way, for the simple reason that they are no longer wanted; but we may be safe in assuming it something less than the age of a worker. If kept constantly in a queenless hive, they might live for three or four months perhaps. AGE OF THE QUEEN. As the queen does little or no out-door work, and is seldom killed by violence as are the drones, we might expect her to live to a good old age, and this she does, despite her arduous oviparous duties. Some queens die, seemingly of old age the second season, but generally they live through the second or third, and we have had them lay very well, even during the fourth year. They are seldom profitable after the third year, and the Italians will usually have a young queen "helping her mother" in her egg laying duties, before she becomes unprofitable. If a very large amount of brood is found in a hive, two queens will often be found, busily employed, and this point should be remembered while seeking to introduce valuable queens. ALIGHTING BOARDS. A few years ago. it was common to see beehives perched upon benches or "legs", with grass and weeds so thick on the ground below, that if a heavily laden bee missed the hive, it was a chance if it picked its way out in a full half hour; but, at present, we usually see the hives so near the ground that those heav- ALIGHTING BOAEDS. 6 ily laden with pollen or honey may go in on foot, if they find it more convenient so to do. If you doubt the utility of having the ground smooth and clean in front of the hives, it may be well to take a look at a hive set in the weeds and grass, and then at one prepared in the way we advise. Several years ago, we had a fine colony suspended from a pair of spring balances. It was in the height of the clover bloom, and the hive gained in weight during the day an even 10 Ibs. As the hive was raised a couple of inches from the ground to suspend it, the ftees, at about 9 o'clock, had fallen on the ground in quite a little cluster, where they paused to take breath, until they could again take wing to get into the hive. At this time, the spring balance showed a gain of an ounce every five minutes. To help them, a cloth was tacked from their old alighting beard to the entrance of the hive; they then crawled in in a steady stream, and the dial of the balance at once showed a gain of one ounce in every /ll the patience in the world, they^will'atj>neejset to^work to repair it, and that, too,Jwithout a word of remonstrance. If you pinch them, they will sting, and any body that has energy enough to take care of himself, would do as much had he the weapon. *""*" ANGER OF BEES. We as yet know very little of bees comparatively, and the more we learn, the easier we find it to be to get along without any clashing in regard to who shall be master. In fact, we take all their honey now, almost as fast as they gather it, and even if we are so thoughtless as to starve them to death, no word of complaint is made. There are a few circumstances, under which bees seem " cross," and, although we may not be able to account exactly for it, we can take precautions to avoid these unpleasant features, by a little care. A few years ago, a very intelligent friend procured some Italians, an extractor, &c., and commenced bee culture. He soon learned to handle them, and succeeded finely; when it came time to extract, the whole business went on so easily, that they were surprised at what had been said about experienced hands being needed to do the work. They had been in the habit of doing this work as I had directed, towards the middle of the day, while the great mass of the bees were in the fields, but in the midst of a heavy yield of clover honey, when the hives were full to overflowing, they were one day stopped by a heavy thunder shower. This of course drove the bees home, and at the same time washed the honey out of the blossoms so completely that they had nothing to do but remain in the hives until more was secreted. Not so with their energetic and enthusiastic owner; as soon as the rain had ceased, the hives were again opened and an attempt made to take out the frames, as but an hour before, but the bees that were all gentleness then, seemed now possessed of the very spirit of mischief and malice, and when all hands liad been severely stung, they concluded that prudence was the better part of valor and stopped operations for the day. While loads of honey were coming in all the while, and every bee rejoicing, none were disposed to be cross ; but after the shower, all hands were standing around idle, and when a hive was opened, each was ready to take a grab from his neighbor, and the result was a free fight in a very short time. I know of nothing in the world that will induce bees to sting with such wicked recklessness, as to have them get to quarreling over combs or honey left exposed when they have nothing to do. From a little carelessness in this respect, and nothing else, I have seen a whole apiary so demoralized that people were stung wrhen passing along the street several rods distant. During the middle of the day, when bees were ANGER OF BEES. 9 AHGER OF BEES. busily engaged on the flowers, during a good yield, I have frequently left filled combs standing on the top of a hive from noon until supper time without a bee touching them; but to do this after a hard rain, or at a time when little or no honey is to be gathered in the fields, might result in the ruin of several colonies, and you and your bees' being voted a nuisance by the whole neighborhood. Almost every season, we get more or less letters complaining that the bees have suddenly become so cross as to be almost unmanageable, and these letters come along in July, after the clover and linden have begun to slack up. The bees are not so very unlike mankind after all, and all you have to do is to avoid opening the hives for a few days, until they get used to the sudden disappointment of having the avenues through which they were getting wealth so rapidly, cut off. After a week or ten days, they will be almost as gentle as in the times when they gathered a half gallon of honey daily, if you are only careful about leaving hives open too long, or leaving any bits of honey or comb about. Within a few feet of me, sits a young man who once laughed about being afraid of bees, and commenced work in the apiary with such an earnest good will that I had high aspirations for him. One beautiful morning, he was tacking rabbets into the hives in front of the door to the honey house, whistling away, as happy as the bees that were humming so merrily about his head. Pretty soon, I saw some honey and bits of combs that had dropped from one of the hives, scattered about on the ground. I told him he had better stop and clean it up, or he would certainly get stung; as the bees seemed very peaceable while licking it up, he thought he would let them have it, in spite o£ my warning. After they had taken all the honey, they began buzzing about for more, and not finding any, in a very ungenerous way, commenced stinging him for his kindness. His lesson was a more severe one than I had expected, for they not only drove him from the apiary that morning, but I fear for all time to come, for although years have passed, he has never since wanted anything more to do with bees. I regret that he did not, at the time, also learn the folly of insisting on having his own way. I can not tell you, at present, why bees sting so coolly and vindictively just after having had a taste of stolen sweets, yet nearly all the experience I have had of trouble with stinging, has been from this very cause. Bees from colonies that have a habit of robbing, will buzz about ones ears and eyes for hours, seeming to delight in making one nervous and fidgety, if they succeed in so doing, and they not only threaten, but oftentimes inflict, the most painful stings, and then buzz about in an infuriated way, as if frantic because unable to sting you a dozen times more after their sting is lost. The colonies that furnish this class of bees are generally hybrid, or perhaps black bees having just a trace of Italian blood. These bees seem to have a perfect passion for following you about, and buzzing before your nose from one side to the other (until you get cross-eyed in trying to follow their erratic oscillations), in a way that is most especially provoking. One such colony annoyed us so much while extracting, that we killed the queen, although she was very prolific, and substituted a full blood Italian. Although it is seldom a pure Italian follows one about in the manner mentioned, yet an occasional colony may contain bees that do it; at least we have found such, where the workers were all three banded. That it is possible to have an apiary without any such disagreeable bees, we have several times demonstrated, but oftentimes you will have to discard some of your very best honey gatherers, to be entirely rid of them. With a little practice, the apiarist will tell as soon as he comes near the apiary, whether any angry bees are about, by the high keynote they utter when on the wing. It is well known that, with meal feeding we have perfect tranquillity although bees from every hive in the apiary may be working on a square yard of meal. 3STow, should we substitute honey for the meal, we should have a perfect "row;" for a taste of honey found in the open air during a dearth of pasturage, or at a time when your bees have learned to get it by stealing instead of honest industry, seems to have the effect of setting every bee crazy. In some experiments to determine how and why this result came about, we had considerable experience with angry bees. After they had been robbing, and had become tranquil, we tried them with dry sugar; the quarrelsome bees fought about it for a short time, but soon resumed their regular business of hanging about the well filled hives, trying to creep into every crack and crevice, and making themselves generally disagreeable all round. If a hive was to be opened, they were into it almost before the cover was raised, and then resulted a pitched battle between them and the inmates; the AKTS. 10 operator was sure to be stung by one or both parties, and, pretty soon, some of the good people in-doors would be asking what in the world made the bees so awfully cross, saying that they even came in-doors and tried to sting. Now, why could they not work peaceably on the sugar as they do on the meal, or the clover blossoms in June V We dampened the sugar with a sprinkler, and the bees that were at work on it soon started for home with a load; then began the high key note of robbing, faint at first, then louder and louder, until I began to be almost frightened at the mischief that might ensue. When the dampness was all licked up, they soon subsided into their usual condition. The effect of feeding honey in the open air, is very much worse than from feeding any kind of syrup, and syrup from white sugar incites robbing in a much greater degree than that from brown sugar; the latter is so little relished by them that they only use it when little else is to be found. It is by the use of damp brown sugar that we get rid of the greater part of what are usually termed angry bees, or bees that prefer to prowl round, robbing and stinging, rather than gather honey "all the day," as the greater part of the population of the apiary does. The sugar should be located several rods away, and should be well protected from the rain, but in such a way as to allow the bees to have free access. When no flowers are in bloom, they will work on it in great numbers, but when honey is to be found, you will see none but the prowling robbers round it. These, you will very soon notice, are mostly common bees and those having a very little Italian blood. We have seen Italians storing honey in boxes, while the common bees did nothing but work in the sugar barrels. Where you work without a veil, it is very convenient to have these annoying bees out of the way, and, even if they belong to our neighbors, we prefer to furnish them with all the cheap sugar they can lick up. The remarks that have been made are particularly for large apiaries; where one has only a single hive and no neighbors who keep bees, the case is something like Eob-inson Crusoe on the Island; no chance for stealing, and consequently nothing to be cross about. Bees are seldom cross or angry, unless through some fault or carelessness of your own. JUflFS. Although I have given the matter considerable attention, I can not find that ants are guilty of anything that should AKTS. warrant the apiarist in waging any very determined warfare against them. Some years ago, a visitor frightened me by saying that the ants about my apiary would steal every drop of honey as fast as the bees could gather it. Accordingly, I prepared myself with a tea-kettle of boiling water, and not only killed the ants, but some of the grape vines also. Afterward there came a spring when the bees, all but about eleven colonies, dwindled awray and died, and the hives filled with honey, scattered about the apiary unprotected, seemed to be about as fair a chance for the ants that had not " dwindled" a particle, as they could well ask for. I watched to see how fast they would carry away the honey, but, to my astonishment, they seemed to care more for the hives that contained bees, than for those containing only honey. I soon determined that it was the warmth from the cluster, that especially attracted them, and as the hives were directly on the ground, the ants soon moved into several that contained only a small cluster and for awhile both used one common entrance. As the bees increased, they began to show a decided aversion to having two families in the same house, although the ants were evidently inclined to be peaceable enough, until the bees tried to " push " matters, when they turned about and showed themselves fully able to hold possession. The bees seemed to be studying over the matter for awhile, and finally, I found them one day taking the ants, one by one, and carrying them high up in the air, and letting them drop at such a distance from their home, that they would surely never be able to walk back again. The bees, as fast as they became good strong colonies, drove the ants out, and our experience ever since has been, that a good colony of bees is never in any danger of being troubled in the least by ants. One weak colony, after battling awhile with a strong nest of the ants, swarmed out; but they might have done this any way, so we do not lay much blame to the ants. Ants sometimes annoy us very much by getting into barrels of honey, sugar, &c., and I do not know of any way of remedying the mischief except to get them out, and then keep them out. The cloth covers we use for our extractors, we find very convenient for keeping them out of barrels. Slip the cloth over the top of the barrel and press the upper hoop over it, and no ant can force its way in. Sugar boxes are made with tight fitting covers on purpose. Sometimes, it is quite convenient to protect the APtABtST. 11 APIARY. contents of a table, by setting the feet in dishes of water; but we have seldom found them so troublesome as to be obliged to resort to such measures. Ants frequently kill the young grape vines, and young plants and trees of different kinds, and it may be well therefore to know how to get rid of them pleasantly and easily. I really can not feel like recommending boiling water, on account of its cruelty; besides the danger of killing our vines, &c., by its use. It is well known, that where things do not please them, they are much disposed to "pull up stakes" and "abscond," very much in the way the bees do; and the simplest way we know of inducing them to do this, is to sprinkle powdered borax about their hills. After the first rain, you will see them forming a " caravan," lugging their larvae, stores, &c., to a place where they are not annoyed by the disagreeable soapy borax. Spots in our apiary, where they have been on hand every season for years, have been permanently vacated after one application of this simple remedy. If they make troublesome "trains" running into the pantry, honey house, &c., you are to follow them them to their nest, and there apply the borax. As I have said before, I have not been able to discover that ants have any particular liking for honey, and I should take very little trouble to drive them away, unless they got into the liquid honey and got drowned or something of that kind. By making their habits and instincts a careful study, wre shall probably get at the readiest means of banishing them, and we may also discover that they are no enemy after all, as has often been the case with many of the insect and feathered tribes. Let us try to be as neighborly as we consistently can, with all these wonderful little creatures, that, in a certain sense, are fellow travellers in this world of ours. APIARIST. One who keeps bees, or a bee-keeper ; and the place where he keeps his bees, is called an APIAK1T. As you can not well aspire to be the former until you are possessed of the latter, we will proceed to start an apiary. LOCATION. There is scarcely a spot on the surface of the earth where mankind find sustenance, that will not, to some extent, support bees, although they may do much better in some localities than in others. A few years ago, it was thought that only localities especially favored, would give large honey crops, but since the introduction of the Italians, and the new methods of management, we are each year astonished to hear of great yields here and there, and from almost every quarter of the globe. It will certainly pay to try a hive or two of bees, no matter where you may be located. Bees are kept with much profit, even in the heart of some of our largest cities. In this case, the apiary is usually located on the roof of the building, that the bees may be less likely to frighten nervous people, and those unacquainted with their habits. Such an apiary would be established like those on the ground in all essential points. Select a spot near the dwelling, and, if possible, have it where you wrill be likely to cast your eye every time you pass out or in. Although trees can scarcely be said to be objectionable, wre believe we would prefer a clear piece of ground, that we might supply the shade to our liking. It will be an excellent investment of your time or money to have the plat nicely cleaned of all rubbish, and the ground leveled as far as may be; if you can get it in the condition of a brick yard all the better ; a gentle slope would be desirable, and although a slope to the south and east has been thought best, we are not sure that it makes any particular difference. As we wish the ground to dry quickly after showers, it will be an excellent plan to have it all under drained. If you can not wrell do this, make open ditches around the outside, or wherever water seems disposed to stand. The ground should be a little higher than the surrounding land, for this very reason, and you should be careful that no low places are left where the water may collect and stand around or near the hives. Bees ascend with difficulty when heavily laden, and on this account we would have the apiary located in a valley, rather than on a hill, that they may rise as they go in quest of stores, and then have a downward slope as they come in with their loads. They will also suffer less from the effects of heavy winds, when given a home on rather low ground. WIND BREAKS. A tight board fence should surround the plat, at least on the north and west sides, to keep off cold winds, and if it can be made strong enough to stand the prevailing winds it will be all the better to have it as much as 8 feet high. We would by all means advise having some kind of an enclosure that will exclude poultry, dogs, etc. A flock of "enterprising" hens will make more disorder in APIAEY. 12 APIAKY. a few hours in a well kept apiary than the owner can' restore in a half day. We wish to have the ground so clean that we can get down on our knees, in front of any hive, at any time. This we can not do in any enclosure where poultry have free access. The high strong fence will also do much to discourage thieves from attempting to pillage the honey, for climbing into such an enclosure is quite risky business when it adjoins a dwelling. If a part of the dwelling could open directly into the apiary, it would be a fine thing on many accounts. THE VINEYARD APIARY. Get two posts 6 feet long and three inches square; these must be of some durable wood, white oak for instance. If you can afford the trouble and expense, we really wrould prefer that you have them planed and painted ; at any rate, do not expect your apiary ever to be any thing you may be proud of, if you push down some old sticks temporarily, one longer than the other perhaps, and both askew, for such work soon becomes unattractive and is shunned. Many visitors have admired our apiary, and thought it no wonder we enjoyed bee-keeping in such a place, and these same persons have declared their intention of tipping their poor neglected hives of bees up square and true, removing the weeds, starting grape vines, etc., but alas ! their attempts were too often but a couple of sticks picked up hastily as we have mentioned, and a few vigorous strokes in the battle with old dame nature, and then they desisted, before the ucoy old lady" had even had time to yield, and bless her devotees with such smiles as only the successful cultivator of the soil knows she can give. Select the site of your workshop, for such we shall expect it to be, near the centre of your plat of ground, and drive these posts or stakes so that they stand east and west, and just three feet from each other, measuring from outside to outside. They are to be driven in the ground so that just four feet is left above, and they must stand plumb and square; if you can't make them true otherwise, get a lever and strong chain and twist them until they are so. Now nail a strip of pine board 1x8 inches and 3 feet long, on the south of both, and just level with the top, from one to the other; just three feet below this, nail a similar one. When the whole is square, true, and plumb, stretch three wires from one strip to the other; these are to be at equal distances from the posts and from each other, and we would then have something like the following figure. Let A, A, represent the posts, B, B, the 1x8 strips nailed on the south side of the posts, and C, D, E, the wires. These wires should be galvanized iron wire, about No. 16 or 17; larger would be more expensive and no better. Now we are all ready to have a fine thrifty Concord grape vine plant- B E D B ed directly underneath the central wire D. Of course some other grape will do, but we have found none so hardy and thrifty, and that gives us the strong rapid growth that is so desirable for making a shade for our hives, as soon as extreme hot weather comes on. Vines are usually planted only in the spring and fall; but we should have very much more confidence in your success, if we knew you were one of those clever individuals who can plant a vine and make it grow, at any season of the year. You can surely do it if you have a mind to. Go to your nearest nursery-nian (don't ever buy of peddlers), tell him what you want, and get him to help you take up the vine, roots, dirt and all, soaking the soil with water to make it stick together if need be, while you place the whole in a bushel basket for transportation. Make a large hole beneath your trellis, and lift your vine into it as carefully as you took it up, fill in with good soil, and, after cutting of£ all the top but one shoot with three or four leaves, treat it just as you would a hill of corn that you wish to do extra well. If the operation is done in hot dry weather, it will probably need watering, and may be shading, until it gets started. We expect you in future to see that no weed or spear of grass is allowed to make its appearance within a yard, at least, of this grape vine. Those accustomed to making rustic work, would doubtless be able to make very pretty trellises at a trifling expense for materials. This vine is to have its one shoot tied to the central wire, D, as fast as it grows, pinching off all side shoots after they APIABY. APIABY. have made one leaf. When it gets to the top of the trellis, pinch it off also, and it will soon throw out side shoots. Pinch all off again except one on each side near the bottom bar B. Train these by tying, straight out horizontally until they reach the posts, then train them up the posts and pinch them off like the middle one. Now get two more shoots to train up the wires, 0 and E, and we are done. The future treatment of the vines consists only in cutting the upright shoots all back to the horizontal arms tied to the lower bar, B, every winter, training two new shoots up each wire and post every summer, and pinching them off whenever they get to the top. THE VINEYARD APIARY, AND Very wrell; your one vine is supposed to have become strong and vigorous, and not only to have covered the trellis completely, but to have become impatient, seemingly, of being restrained by the continual pinching back necessary to keep it within such narrow limits. Perhaps it has in fact manifested this by blossoming and attempting to bear grapes out of season near the top bar of the 'SWARMING" THE GRAPE-VINES. trellis. It is precisely like a colony having too many bees for the size of the hive. Very likely, each one of the ten upright canes has produced three or four fine clusters of extra large nice berries, but still the vigor of the vine (if our directions have been carefully complied with) is equal to something more; and, accordingly, we encourage one of the outside canes by allowing it to send a new APIARY. 14 APIARY. shoot up above the rest of the trellis. When this is well started, the whole cane is bent over so as to go straight down to the ground, and then curved outward so as to lie in a trench a few inches deep, that it may be covered with soil enough to protect it from injury. A new trellis is now to be constructed, if it has not been done before, just 3 feet from the old one ; that is, the two trellises are to have a walk of just 3 feet in width between them. The new shoot grows very rapidly and can soon be tied up to the first post of the new trellis and across the lower bar. Now select a side shoot for each wire, and almost before you are aware of it, you have another complete grape vine. The engraving will make it all plain. The view is taken from the south side, and the hives are just visible through the foliage in their proper places. One strong vine will furnish shoots for not only a new one at the right and left, but even for the whole six that are to surround the original one, and in a single season, if need be. As the new vines take root almost as soon as laid down, the old vine suffers but little loss, and we have known new ones, started in this manner the 4th of July, to be well loaded with fine grapes the next season, their connection with the old vine enabling them to become bearing vines in one year only. Although their remaining attached to the old vine does not seem to impair its productiveness, the aid they receive from it is quite important. This matter we tested by chopping one of the new vines off where it left the old one, as we were hoeing about them. It had been growing with great vigor, and had considerable fruit on it, but the next day the sun hung its foliage like wilted cabbage leaves. By heavy mulching and buckets of water, we induced it to look up again, but it is far behind its comrades, and we have decided not to sever "pa-rental ties" in future at all, and if we are careful in laying them down to tie them close to the posts, they are never in the way. THE LAWK OB CHAFF HIVE APIARY. The idea, that the culture of bees in any way interferes with that of grapes, is a joke entirely outside of our experience. Where grapes are trained thus, fowls, if allowed, will make sad havoc among them ; the bees of course then work on the bruised ones, but seldom otherwise. It may be iirged that the above is too much trouble ; it is some, but the fine crops of fruit that are almost sure to be secured every season should pay well for it all; and if you have more than is needed for home use, you will find a ready sale for such grapes at good prices. LAWN OK CHAFF HIVE APIARY. With these, we can dispense with the grape vines entirely; as their thick, chaff packed walls protect them from the sun, as well as from the frosts of winter. Such an apiary may be made very pretty, for it is in reality a miniature city, with its streets and thoroughfares. During the swarming season, it APIARY. 15 APIARY. will probably, at times, be quite a busy little city. Some expense and care is avoided by this plan, it is true, but the hives cost considerably more, and are rather unwieldy to handle when bees are to be moved about, sold, etc. The fact that they can be safely wintered on their summer stands, and that very little preparation is needed to enable them to winter safely, is much in their favor. THE HOUSE APIARY. This is a very old idea, having been rec- ommended and used at different times for more than a century past. With the strides that bee culture has been making recently, new reasons have come up for making it desirable that the hives should be housed; and in spite of the difficulties, many house apiaries are now giving very good results, and with perhaps less labor than when the hives are kept in the open air. The objections to the house apiary are, first, the expense; especially the first expense; A MODERN HOUSE APIARY. for one can make a start in bee culture with a very small amount of. capital, with the out-door hives, and the sales of honey and bees will at once furnish all the capital needed, for a moderate yearly increase. With the house, the capital to put up the building must be furnished at the outset, and a house for 50 colonies will cost much more than the same number of hives. Most apiarists prefer working in the open air to being cramped up in a building (no matter how large it may be), even at the expense of hav- AJPIABY. 16 APIABY. ing to perform more labor and take more steps. Secondly, in a building, we are obliged to get all the bees ont of a room every time we open a hive, and bees, either dead or alive, are very nntidy when crushed by careless footsteps on the floor of a room. To avoid this necessitates an almost incessant use of the broom. Again, when young bees are just sallying out for their first flight, they will, if the hive is opened at just the right time, come out in the house in great numbers, and to try to stop them by any other means than closing the hive, is like trying to stop the rain from falling. These bees, after having had their " play-spell," will insist on returning to the hive in the same way that they came out, and if they are driven out of the house and the door closed, they will sometimes collect in a large cluster on or about the door. It is true they are seldom lost, for they will usually be allowed to enter the hives nearest the door, but it weakens the hive from which they came, and is very apt to puzzle a novice in the business sorely. To obviate this trouble, we can avoid opening the hives during the afternoon, or at such times as the bees are likely to rush out for a play ; after a shower for instance. We give a very accurate picture of the house apiary that we have been using for the past two years, except that the artist has given it a roof rather more fanciful than our own. The interior will be readily understood from the diagram; the upper story is at present occupied by the children as a play room. Perhaps the most difficult part to make in the whole building is the roof, unless we make it of tin; this is sdme-what expensive, but if kept well painted* it will last almost indefinitely. The ornamental work is, of course, in no way essential to the success of the establishment pecuniarily. Many house apiaries are constructed of a square or oblong shape, but our objections to such would be the difficulty of getting the bees out of the corners of the room (this might be obviated by having a square house with the doors at two opposite corners), and the increased danger of having both bees and queen get into the wrong hives. From the engraving of the house apiary, and diagram of the ground plan given below, it will be seen that only 3 hives are on a side. The bees from the central one will of course recognize their own entrance, and those at each side, being the end of the row, will also find theirs without trouble. To make the entrance to each hive still more conspicuous we take advantage of the battens on the building, as will be seen from the diagram. The building is made of pine or other boards one foot in width, and these boards which are put on up and down, constitute the entire frame of the building. Six of them, put as close together as they will come conveniently, form one of the eight sides, and the cracks are covered with a beveled batten, one edge of the corner boards being beveled slightly, that the batten may close the corner crack also. A represents one of the heavy outer doors, j and B, the light door with glass sash ; these I doors are the same, on both the east and | west sides of the building. G is the shelf | that runs entirely around the room, on which the hives are placed. It is about 3i feet from the floor, and should be about 18 inch- DIAGRAM OF INTERIOR OF HOUSE APIARY. es wide. The hives are made by a simple division board, E, that holds a pair of metal rabbets on its upper edge, one facing each way; the combs are hung on these, and when all are in place, a sheet of glass, F, bound with tin around its edges, closes the hive by being hung in the rabbets the same as are the frames. The top of the hive is closed by the usual sheet of duck. During winter and spring, the bees are protected by thick chaff cushions laid on the duck sheets. It will be seen that these sheets of glass face the spectator on all sides of the room, and when we can see the bees, during the working season, filling sections and building comb just back of these glass division boards, the effect is more beautiful than can wrell be imagined. The room should afford as few corners, where stray bees may get a lodging, as possible, and to this end, APIABY. we close the triangular corners by bits of board, I, I. They may have a knob on top, and these boxes will then serve for little cupboards,-in which to keep various utensils. If the room is open a great deal, the bees are inclined to waste time in buzzing against the glass; therefore it may be well to have a cloth curtain to drop over them, except when we wish to examine the progress of the colony. To prevent the house from becoming damp, we need a ventilator, II, in the centre of the ceiling, about a foot square; we can also have a trap door in the centre of the floor to admit cool air from the cellar, during very hot weather. I) is the door step, and the entrances are shown through the walls, just by the battens. It will be observed that the middle hive on each side has its entrance through, or rather under, the batten ; this is that the bees may have an additional mark for their own hive, for the entrances (2 inch auger holes) at the sides, are made at the right and left of the battens. The plan seems to work well, for we have lost fewer queens in the house apiary than from any of our out-door hives. The battens are also a shade darker in color, than the rest of the house; thus making them ornamental as well as useful. A light drab is a very pretty color for such a building. Besides the hives we have just described on the shelf, we have precisely the same arrangement of them on the floor, or if preferred, raised 011 a platform a couple of inches above the floor. In extracting, we can get along very well with the lower tier, by removing the sheet of glass, and shaking the bees on the floor close to their combs ; with the upper ones, we find it best to .stand on a chair or box, and shake them on top of the frames close to the wall. If they scatter about, and threaten to run all over the wralls and ceiling, take the next hive from the other side, until they get back, assisting them meanwhile with a little srnoke. For comb honey, we work just as we do with the out-door hives. The upper story will be found very convenient for storing various things about the apiary, such as the chaff cushions during the summer, and empty sections and combs during the winter; for we wish to have our lower room, at least, always neat and tidy. The good and desirable qualities of the house apiary are, first, it is always sheltered and dry, and if the building is kept painted, the hives will always be in good repair; 2 17 APIABY. this is quite an advantage over out-door hives. The hives can be much more quickly opened, as they need no other covering than the chaff cushions in winter, and a single sheet of cloth in summer. Secondly, surplus honey, either extracted or comb, can be removed in much less time, for we have only to remove it and store it in the centre of the room, instead of the laborious carrying that has to be done with out-door hives. Also empty combs, combs filled for destitute colonies, empty frames, frames of section boxes, and, in short, everything needed in working about the hives may be stored in the centre of the room, within arms reach of every one of the 36 hives. Furthermore we can handle the bees and do all kinds of work with them during rainy and wet weather when the out-door hives could not be touched. !N"ay, farther! we can handle the bees by lamp light after the duties of the day are over; we have repeatedly made new colonies thus, to avoid the robber bees that were so annoying in the day time, during a dearth of pasturage. By closing the glass doors, and opening the outer doors, we can work in perfect freedom from robbers at any season of the year. Artificial swarming, queen rearing, etc., can be carried on very expeditiously, and at a small expense, for the reasons we have mentioned. It has been said that the bees sting worse in the house, than in the open air. This may be the case under some circumstances, but we think not as a general rule. The house gets unpleasantly filled with smoke from the smoker, but it will be but little expense to have a box in which to set the smoker, having a smoke pipe communicating with the open air. There is still another advantage in the house apiary, and it is perhaps the most important of all. It is that the bees, honey, and all the implements, can be easily kept under lock and key; a very important item where thieving is very prevalent. Where the apiarist becomes the owner of more colonies than can profitably be kept in one place, he can establish house apiaries at almost any point, and I have long had visions of a large central apiary, with f> house apiaries arranged hexagonally all about it; say three miles from the center, and three miles from each other. I think they could be~so managed that a visit once a week during the honey season would, as a general thing, be all thatjwould be needed. Some loss would result from unexpected swarming, but this APIARY. 18 APIARY. could in a great measure be obviated by the use of the extractor, or an abundant supply of sections furnished with the fdn. If located near a dwelling, some of the inmates would soon learn to hive the swarms, and look after things that might turn up. No one should think of undertaking this, until he has the ability of first caring well for one apiary; and it can never be made a success, until we have entirely got over all such foolishness as allowing bees to starve, to remain a long time queenless, or to dwindle down from any cause, as too many of us now do. With a good horse, and a trim light buggy, it would be very pretty wrork, riding about and overseeing these apiaries; but who among us has the ability to do it successfully V Instead of answering aloud, go to work quietly, and let your works be the answer. FLOATING APIARY. This project, we believe, has never as yet been put in practice in our own country. The idea is to have an apiary on a large flat bottomed boat or raft, which is to be floated along on some of our large rivers, so as to be constantly in the midst of the greatest flow of honey almost the season through. It is well known that the white clover commences to bloom first in the extreme south, and then gradually moves northward ; if we could be in the midst of this yield during its height, for 3 or 4 months, it would seem enormous crops might be obtained. We are informed by history, that the ancient Egyptians of the Mle made a practical success of these floating apiaries, and that they were warned when it was time to return home, by the depth to which the boat sank in the water, under the weight of the cargo of honey. That the bees might not be lost, the apiary was floated to a new field during the night. Something similar, located on wheels to be drawn by horses, has been suggested, but we believe never attempted. Since the above was written, Mr. C. 0. Perrine, formerly in the honey business in Chicago, has put the project into practice, on a rather large scale. Between four and five hundred colonies were put on a couple of barges, and towed by a steamer up the river from Kew Orleans. The establishment started out in the spring of 1878, but at the present writing, Sept. 1878, the enterprise can hardly be called a success. In consequence of several accidents, the hives were finally taken from the barges and carried by the steamer until a favorable point was reached, and then set out on the land, like an ordinary apiary, the process being repeated as often as the forage began to fail. As near as I can gather from newspaper reports, the loss of bees, while flying on the water, was one of the principal drawbacks. Our friend, Perrine, declares it his intention to try again, until all difficulties have been met and overcome, and as he has invested several thousand dollars in the experiment, he has the hearty sympathy of the bee folks of our land. Those interested will find further particulars in the April GLEANINGS, and in the August Bee Keeper's Magazine, for 1878. THE RAILWAY APIARY. The honey house is placed at the lowest side of the apiary, and a track or tracks with proper switches made to run between each two rows of hives. A barrel is fixed low down in the car, and extractor and implements placed over it. The whole is covered with a light, square tent, made of canvas and wire cloth, for an assistant to work secure from robbers. Boll your car to the top of the slope, hand the full frames from the hive through a slit in the canvas to your assistant until the hive is finished; then roll your car to the next two hives, and so on until you get to the house, when your barrel should be full and ready to roll off: for another. The same arrangement would answer for avoiding the labor of removing comb honey from the hives; and if the bees are wintered in-doors, the hives can be placed on the car, and run directly into the wintering house. Some experiments have been made with hives permanently located on small low cars, which are to be run into a frost-proof house for wintering, or whenever the weather is such as to make it advisable to house them. WHICH STYLE OF APIARY TO ADOPT. By way of summing up, I will state that with my present experience I would choose the Chaff hive apiary, for honey alone. For raising bees and and queens for sale, I would use the vineyard apiary and Simplicity hives, lifting the bees into Chaff hives to winter. If I were in a neighborhood where honey and bees were very likely to be stolen, or if I were going to locate an apiary away from home, I would choose the house apiary. Objections to the latter are, the inconvenience of handling hives that you can not walk all around, and the expense of the building. For general purposes, I would use a vineyard apiary, with both Simplicity and Chaff hives. A HO1TSE APIARY FOR t-0 HIVES. A PART OF OUR OWN ORIGINAL, HEXAGONAL APIARY. j. H. TOWNLEY'S CHAFF HIVE A >7A IY, TOMPKINS, JACKSON co., >ncii A. A. RICE'S APIARY, INCLUDING HOUSE APIARY, SEVILLE, OHIO. APHIDES. 19 ARTIFICIAL FERTILIZATION. APHIDES. It is with that class of these insects that produce honey (or rather a sweetish substance that bees collect and store as honey), that we have to do. They are a kind of plant lice, and are to be seen in almost all localities, and during nearly all the summer and fall months, if we only keep our eyes about us, and notice them when they are right before us. If you examine the leaves of almost any green tree, you will find them peopled by small insects, almost the color of the leaves on which they live; while some are quite large, others are almost or quite invisible to the naked eye. Now all these bits of animated nature, while they feed on the green foliage, are almost incessantly emitting a sort of liquid ex-* crement; and as this is usually thrown some distance from the insect, it often falls from the leaves of the tree, like dew. If this matter is new to you, I would ask you to examine the stone pavements early in the morning, under almost any green tree; an apple or willow will be pretty sure to show spots of moisture, something as if water or rain had been sprinkled over it in a fine spray. The leaves of the trees will also be found somewhat sticky where the exudation is sufficient to make it noticeable. This substance is, I believe, not always sweet to the taste, but usually so. The quantity is often so small, as to be unnoticed by the bees, but occasionally, they will seem quite busy licking it up. I have several times found them at work on the leaves of our apple trees very early in the morning, but never to such an extent that it might really be called honey dew. I have seen them also on a willow fence, making it hum like a buckwheat field, and at the same time, the ground under the trees looked as if molasses had been sprinkled about. The bees were at work on the ground also; the honey tasted much like cheap molasses. The strange part of the matter was that this occurred during a warm day late in the month of Oct.; it proceeded entirely from the aphides, for they literally covered the leaves of tlie willow, and could be plainly seen, ejecting the sweet liquid, while they fed on the leaves. This was plainly the cause of the honey dew in this case, but it is by no means clear, that such is always the case. See HONUY DEW. ARTIFICIAL 0OMB. Although several attempts have been made to produce comb for the bees of full depth of cell, we believe all have resulted in failures; the bees either leave them untouched, or gnaw them down, and build their own in place. If given the base of the cell, however, with only shallow walls of such depth that the bees can reach to the bases with their mandibles so as to shape and thin the bottom as they wish before the walls are raised, the case is quite different: for they are used then as readily perhaps as their own natural comb, as has been abundantly proven by the COMB FOUNDATION, which see. ARTIFICIAL FERTILIZATION. Much time and money has been expended in wire cloth houses, and glass fixtures, to accomplish this result, the more perhaps because a few sanguine individuals imagined they had succeeded in having the queens meet the drones in confinement, thus securing the advantage of choice drones, as well as queens, to rear stock from.* A friend of mine was quite sure he succeeded, but after examining into the matter, it was found that the queens got out and took their flight in the usual way through the passage that was left for the worker bees ; he having based his calculations on the oft repeated statement that a queen could not pass through a passage 5-32 of an inch in width. The queen just before her flight is very slender, and will get through a passage that an ordinary laying queen would not, and those who claimed to have succeeded, being rather careless observers, might have supposed that the fertilization had in reality taken place in the hive. Again, one of those who claimed to have succeeded states that a queen will always take exercise in the open air, after she has been fertilized in confinement ; this seems to render the whole matter ridiculous, especially if she takes this flight before she commences to lay. About the year 1870, hundreds of bee-keepers were busily at work, trying this project with a view of keeping the Italian blood in a state of absolute purity, in neighborhoods where black or common bees were kept in considerable numbers; and the subject affords a fair illustration of the mischief which may be done by careless or unscrupulous persons, in reporting through the press, what has been guessed at rather than demonstrated by careful experiment. Taking into view the in and in breeding that would have resulted had the experiments really been a success, it is doubtful if it would have been a benefit after all. When it was found that the Italians speedi- * Since the above was written the matter has been revived, and an account of at least a partial success, is given in the Bee-Keepers Magazine' for Nov., of 1878. ARTIFICIAL HEAT. 20 ARTIFICIAL PASTUEAGE. ly became hybrids where so many black bees were all about us, as a matter of necessity frequent importations from Italy began to be made ; and when it was discovered that stock fresh from their native home^at once showed themselves superior as honey gatherers, the business assumed considerable proportions, and now almost every apiarist of 60 hives, has an imported queen of his own to rear queens from. This has the effect of not only giving us the best stock known, but of giving frequent fresh strains of blood, and is perhaps very much better all around, than it would have been had artificial fertilization been a success. ARTIFICIAL HEAT. As strong colonies early in the season are the ones that get the honey and furnish the early swarms as well, and are in fact the real source of profit to the bee-keeper, it is not to be wondered at that much time and money has been spent in devising ways and means whereby all might be brought up to the desired strength in time for the first yield of clover honey. As market gardeners and others hasten the early vegetables by artificial heat, or by taking advantage of the sun's rays by means of green houses, &c., it would seem that something of the kind might be done with bees; in fact we have, by the aid of glass and the heat of a stove, succeeded in rearing young bees every month in the year, even while the weather was at zero or lower outside ; but so far as we can learn, air artificial work of this kind has resulted in failure, so far as profit is concerned. The bees, it is true, learned to fly under the glass and corne back to their hives, but for every bee that was raised in confinement, two or three were sure to die, from one cause or another, and we at length decided it was best to wait for summer weather, and then take full advantage of it. Later, we made experiments with artificial heat while the bees were allowed to fly out at pleasure, and although it seemed at first to have just the desired effect, so far as hastening brood rearing was concerned, the result "was, in the end, just about as before; more bees were hatched, but the unseasonable activity or something else killed off twice as many as were reared, and the stocks that were let alone in the good old way came out ahead. Since then we have rather endeavored to check very early brood rearing, and, we believe, with better results. A few experiments with artificial! heat have] apparently succeeded, and it may be that it will eventually be made a success; but our impression is, [that we had much better turn our energies to something else, until we have settled warm weather. Packing the hives with chaff, sawdust, or any other warm, dry, porous material, so as to economize the natural heat of the cluster, seems to answer the purpose much better, and such treatment seems to have none of the objectionable features that working with artificial heat does. The chaff needs to be as close to the bees as possible; and to this end, we would have all the combs removed except such as are needed to hold their stores. Bees thus prepared seem to escape all the ill effects of frosty nights in the early part of the season, and we accomplish for brood rearing, exactly what, was hoped for by the use of artificial heat. For the benefit of those who may be inclined to experiment, I would state that I covered almost our entire apiary with manure, on the plan of a hot bed, one spring, and had the satisfaction of seeing almost all die of spring dwindling. At another time, I kept the house apiary warmed up to a summer temperature with a large oil lamp, for several weeks, just to have them beat those out of doors. The investment resulted in losing nearly all in the house apiary with spring dwindling, while those outside stayed in their hives as honest bees should, until settled warm weather, and their did finely, just because I was "too busy to take care of them" (?), as I then used to express it. After you have had experience enough to count your profitable colonies by the hundred, and your crops of honey by the ton, it will do very well to experiment with green houses and cold frames; but beginners had better let such appliances alone unless they have plenty of money to spare for more bees. ARTIFICIAL PASTURAGE. Although there is quite a trade springing up in seeds and plants to be cultivated for their honey alone, and although we have about 4000 young basswood trees of our own, growing finely and promising to be the basis of a honey farm at some future time, yet we can at present give little encouragement to those who expect to realize money by such investments. There is certainly a much greater need of taking care of the honey that is almost constantly wasting just for lack of bees to gather it. A field of buckwheat will perhaps occasionally yield enough honey to pay the expense of sowing, as it comes in at a time when the bees in many places would get little else ; and if it does not pay in honey, it certainly will in grain. AKTIFICIAL PASTURAGE. 21 ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. If one has the money, and can afford to ran the risk of a failure, it is a fine thing to make some accurate experiments, and it may be that a farm of one or two hundred acres, judiciously stocked with honey bearing plants, trees, and grains, would be a success financially. It has been much talked about, but none so far as we know, have ever put the idea in practice. To beginners we would say : plant and sow all you can that will be sure to pay aside from the honey crop, and then, if that is a success, you will be so much ahead ; but beware of investing much in seeds that are for plants producing nothing of value except honey. Alsike, and white Dutch clover, buckwheat, rape, mustard, and the like, it will do to invest in ; but catnip, mignonette, Rocky mountain bee plant, etc., etc., we would at present handle rather sparingly. It should be borne in mind that we can hardly test a plant, unless we have one or more acres of it in bloom, and that small patches do little more than to demonstrate that the blossoms contain some honey, giving us very little clue to either quantity or quality. Bees will work on blossoms, and at times with great apparent industry, when they are obliged to make hundreds of visits and consume hours of time, in getting a single load ; we therefore should be intimately acquainted with the interior of the hive, as well as the source from which the bees are obtaining the honey, before we can decide what is profitable to sow as a honey plant. By way of encouragement, we may say that both plants and trees under thorough cultivation, yield honey in much larger quantities than those growing wild, or without attention. Our basswoods that have commenced to blossom, have shown a larger amount of honey in the nectaries, than we ever saw in any that grew in the woods or fields. The question, "How many acres of a good honey bearing plant, would be needed to keep 100 colonies ' busy V" has often been asked. If ten acres of buckwheat would answer while in full bloom, we should need perhaps ten other similar fields sown with rape, mustard, catnip, etc., blossoming at as many different periods, to keep them going the entire warm season. It would seem 200 acres should do nicely, even if nothing were obtained from other sources, but at present we can only conjecture. A colony of bees will frequently pay for themselves in ten days during a good yield from natural pasturage, and if we could keep up this state of affairs during the whole of the summer months, it would be quite an item indeed. Buckwheat, rape, and alsike clover, are the only cultivated plants that have given paying crops of honey, without question, so far as we have been informed. ARTIFICIAL To attempt to give all the various plans and modifications that are recommended and practiced successfully, would make a book of itself ; we shall therefore only give those we think safest and simplest. If you are a new hand with bees, you had better not undertake to do such work, until you find that bees are swarming naturally in the neighborhood. At such a time, you will probably succeed by almost any plan. If you have plenty of money and not much time, you had better buy yotir queens, and the dollar queens will do very well ; if you should get them killed, it will be no serious loss. If you also have plenty of empty combs, you can make an artificial swarm in a very few minutes, by simply moving any strong colony several rods away, and placing a new hive filled with empty comb, in its place. That the returning bees may not kill the strange queen they find in place of their accustomed mother bee, we protect her for a day or two in a cage. See CAGES FOR QUEENS. As they enter with their loads of pollen and honey, they seem very much perplexed and astonished, scramble out of the hive, and after a few turns about the premises to reassure themselves, they go in again, repeating this until too tired, apparently, to bother their little heads any farther with a matter that is altogether beyond their comprehension, and wisely concluding that "what can't be cured, must be endured," unload in the empty combs near the queen, and go after more spoils. We have had a colony of thisj description bring in over 20 Ibs. of honey, during the first two days. Let the queen out after they get friendly to her—see INTRODUCTION OF QUEENS— and your work is done. Should the colony get weak before the young bees begin to| hatch} out, give^themjji comb of hatching! brood from some^ strong -. stock. This plan] is only for the^swarming^season. COMI3S*OF HATCHING BROOD. As these combs of hatching [brood are a very important itemjui building up, or* "slr^nl^i^in^nst^lts7^nVf"a"s" we shall have need of referring to* them often, we will explain th at J you" are* to look over the combslof a very populous 'colony andjselect one that has bees just^gna wing through] the caps of the cells. At the proper season, you ARTIFICIAL 22 ARTIFICIAL should find combs that will hatch out a dozen bees while you are holding them in your hand; it should contain little or no unsealed brood, for the new colony might not be able to feed all the larvae. One L. frame, if full of capped brood, will make a very fair swarm of bees; and as these newly hatched downy bees—like newly hatched chickens for all the world—are ready to take up with anybody or anything, we can put them safely anywhere without fear of their being hostile, to either queens or workers. Can we riot get along without the empty comb by using foundation in its stead V Yes we can, but it is hardly advisable, unless we can have two or three old combs to start with, or a full hive of bees. If you prefer to rear your own queens, which every apiarist should do, move your colony as before, but instead of the queen, give them a frame of eggs from your choicest queen. How if you want fine queens, equally as good as those reared in natural swarming, be sure you do not give them any large larvae, with the eggs. The best and safest way is to get an empty comb, place it in the centre of your colony containing your imported or choice queen, and leave it there until you find eggs in it that are just hatching into larvae; these larvae will be scarcely visible to the naked eye when first hatched, but in place of the egg, you will see a tiny spot of the milky food that the nurse bees place round the embryo bee. This is just the age you wish the larvae for queen rearing, and you may take the frame, bees and all, if you are sure you are not carrying your old queen along—look sharp—to your new hive. If you want as many queen cells as you can get, it will be a good idea to cut an oblong piece out of the comb, just under the eggs and larvae. If it is inconvenient to move your hive (as in the house apiary) you can take only the combs with adhering bees, and in fact you need take only so many of the combs as are necessary to get all the brood and the queen. In 12 days after the eggs are given the bees, the queens may some of them hatch; therefore, if you design saving the extra queens, you will need to remove all the cells but one, or the first hatched queen will destroy them all. We have had a young queen destroy as many as twenty fine cells in a single day, when we were so careless as to delay attending to them just at the right time. About 10 days after the queen hatches, you may expect her to begin to lay, and then you are as far along, as when you purchase a laying queen to start with, except that your bees have been growing old all the time—see AGE or BEES—and unless they are supplied with fresh eggs or brood, will be pretty weak, before any young bees will be hatched to take their place. I^ow if you wish to have matters progress lively, you can give these bees a comb containing eggs every two or three days during the whole time they are waiting for the queen to be hatched and fertilized; they will do much better if they are thus employed, and they will be quite a prosperous colony by the time the queen is ready to lay. To get these eggs, you have only to insert an empty comb in the centre of a populous colony until the queen has deposited as many eggs in the cells as are required. So far, all is very simple. To swarm a large apiary, and at the same time Italianize all our new stocks, we would only have to repeat the process as many times as we have colonies. But how about the surplus queen cells that we cut out ? This is just where the complication comes in; yet if we look into the matter very carefully, we think it will be found quite simple. These queen cells if cut out shortly before hatching and inserted into the combs of any queenless colony, will usually furnish them a queen as soon as the one left where it was built; and if an artificial colony was made at the time the cells were cut out, it is plain we should have them supplied about ten days earlier than the one that was obliged to start their cells from the egg. Bees usually seem to have a preference for building their own cells, instead of having them furnished, but as they can by no possibility get a queen hatched in less than ten days—perhaps nine in extreme cases—the queen from the inserted cell will be out and destroy the others almost as soon as they are started, and so we need be to no trouble to get all the undesirable brood out of the way, as in our first experiment. Unfortunately, there is an if in the matter, and it is, if the bees do not destroy this cell you have given them, and proceed to raise one of their own in the good old way. Many contrivances have been invented to prevent them, such as caging the cell, &c., but we think you will do well to waste no time in experimenting with such machinery. The lamp nursery enables us to hatch almost any number of queen cells, with safety, but occasionally the queens are lost in introducing even then; see LAMP HUKSERY. The plan we would recommend for begin- AKTIFICIAL SWAKMIKG. 23 ASTERS. ners, and perhaps for everybody else as well, is to procure as many combs of hatching brood from different hives as you have queen cells and to insert a cell in each; the manner of inserting the cells, will be found in QUEEN BEARING. These combs are to be all put in the one hive in which the cells were built, and if you have more than ten cells, put on an upper story, or even a third. As there are no bees in the hive except those that built the cells and the young ones just hatching, we shall have no cells torn down, and in a few hours, they wrill have waxed them all firmly in their places. Now with these combs of hatching brood, every one containing a cell nearly ready to hatch, we are in excellent trim to go on with artificial swarming. We can not only remove hives and put empty ones in their places as in our first experiment, but we can take combs of bees and brood from any hive in the apiary, blacks, hybrids, or anything and put them into a new hive located any where, put one of the frames with the queen cell among them, and presto! we have a good colony, requiring lio more care whatever. Four combs of bees and brood, will make a good colony at any time of the year, and they will be at work like an old colony in ten days. We have never known a cell destroyed when given to an artificial swarm in the manner we have stated. In substituting a new hive for an old one, we should, if possible, use a new hive precisely like the old one, or much trouble may be found in getting the bees to go into it. If we cannot do this, make it look at least like the old one. EMPTY COMBS FOR ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. These will almost always be on hand in swarming time, but if not, a frame containing a sheet of fdn. may be put in place of any comb taken from a strong colony. The fdn. is fully as good as the natural comb, and, in some respects, even better. If you have no fdn., let the bees build combs, one at a time, in new frames, watching them to see that they do not build drone comb. If they will not build worker comb, contract the space with a division board, and have the combs built in weaker colonies. Using frames of fdn. is, however, far the better way. During fruit blossoms, and long before swarming time, an ample supply of beautiful combs may be secured, built out from fdn. Caution:—The foregoing directions are given generally for making artificial swarms during the swarming season, or, at least, at a time when honey is coming in abundant- ly. It will require more skill and more care to make artificial swarms in the fall, or at any time when the bees are disposed to rob, and if a hive is moved away, as directed, the new one must always have a comb containing unsealed brood, as well as the empty combs, or the bees will not be certain to de^ fend their hive against robbers. See QUEEN REARING. ASTERS. Under this head, we have a large class of autumn flowers, most of which are honey bearing; they may be distinguished from the helianthus, or artichoke and sunflower family, by the color of the ray flowers. The ray flowers are the outer, colored leaves of the flower, which stand out like rays; in fact, the word aster means star, because these ray flowers stand out like the rays of a star. Many of the yellow autumn flowers are called asters, but this is an error; for the asters are never yellow, except in the centre. The outside, or rays, are blue, purple, or white. You may frequently find a half dozen different varieties growing almost side by side. Where there are acres of them, so to speak, they sometimes yield considerable honey, but some seasons they seem to be unnoticed by the bees. I do not think it will pay to attempt to cultivate them for honey; better move your bees to where they grow naturally, when you have determined by moving a single hive first, as a test, whether they are yielding honey in paying quantities. ASTER. Where the asters and golden rod abound largely, it may be best to defer feeding until these plants have ceased to yield honey; say the last of Sept. B. BARBXLS. I would hardly advise using barrels for comb honey, although it is done to some extent I believe, in districts where the old style of keeping bees in log gams prevails; but for liquid honey, we shall probably never find a cheaper receptacle that will stand the rough usage of shipping honey, as well. It is true, we can put our honey in tin cans, but these are more expensive—the very cheapest costing at least one cent for every pound of honey they will contain— and they cannot be shipped safely, without first being crated. Besides all this, a barrel of honey will be received at a much lower rate of freight, than any other kind of package it is possible to make. If we are then all decided as to the expediency of storing our honey in barrels, we wish to decide upon the most profitable size for these barrels. The regular size of about 31 or 32 gallons is probably the cheapest size, but it has been objected to on account of the difficulty of handling so great a weight as 350 to 400 Ibs., which the barrel and all would weigh. This however is no great objection to one who knows how to u take the advantage " of a barrel, as my father used to express it to u us boys," when we were loading stone, and as economy of money as well as " traps," is quite an item where we have tons of honey, I think we had better have large barrels principally. For the accommodation of customers who want a smaller quantity, it may be well to have some half barrels also, but these will cost considerably more, in proportion to the amount of honey they hold. Some very neat smairones, holding about 140 Ibs, cost about $1.75 each ; this would be at the rate of lie. per Ib. Our large barrels cost us $2.25, and hold about 850 Ibs; this is less than f c. per Ib. for the^package. From this it appears that we shall have to charge a little more forjioney put up in half barrel packages. LEAKY BARRELS. I hope you will feel as I do about it, that It is bad enough to talk about having honey leak all round, without having any practical experience in the matter; and I am very glad to be able to tell you how to entirely avoid it. It may be well to remark that honey has a funny way of expanding during the candying process—it will generally candy as soon as the weather gets cold—and if your barrels or cans do not give it room to expand, it will be pretty sure to push out the corks or bungs. Some kinds of honey expand more than others, and under some circumstances, perfectly ripened honey will scarcely candy at all. If the barrels are left not quite full, and then filled up completely when ready to ship, there wrill be very little trouble. We prefer barrels made of sound oak, but 1 presume those made of other strong wood will answer, if carefully waxed as we shall direct. The hoops should be of strong hoop iron, for honey is very heavy compared with most other liquids, and we wish them to stand safely the rough handling they are likely to recieve on the cars, even if they should be sent back and forth several times. The hoops should be secured by large tacks, if they show any tendency to slip. If you have had the barrels mad§ for your own use and intend them to be returned when you sell honey, it is a very good idea to have them neatly painted. This will keep the hoops in place, and will preserve the barrels very materially. There is one objection to this, however, and that is you are many times under the necessity of waiting for your barrels to be emptied, and then they are likely to be forgotten. We once waited 2 years for we had some sent away with honey, and then succeeded in getting the pay for them instead of the barrels, after much importunity. WAXING THE BARRELS TO PREVENT LEAKING. A good barrel, carefully made of well seasoned timber, should not leak, without any waxing; but as they often do, we think it safest to have them all waxed. This is sim- BAEBELS. 25 BASSWOOD. ply coating the entire inside with wax or paraffine. The latter we consider better, as well as cheaper. Wax is worth from 25 to 30e. per Ib, but the paraffine can be had for 25c. As the latter melts at a lower temperature, and is more limpid when melted, a much less quantity is needed to coat the inside thoroughly and fill all cracks and interstices, and less skill and expedition is needed in its manipulation. You should have about a gallon of the melted liquid, for a small quantity will not keep hot until you can pour out the remainder after the waxing is done, and too much of it will adhere to the inside of the barrel. Ten or 12 Ibs. will do very well. Have your bungs nicely fitted, and a good hammer in readiness to get the bung out quickly. With a large-mouthed tunnel, pour in the hot liquid, and bung it up at once. 2sTow roll the barrel so as to have the wax go entirely round it, then twirl it on each head, and give it another spinning so as to cover perfectly all round the chime. This operation will have warmed the air inside to such an extent, that the liquid will be forced into every crevice, and if there is a poor spot, you will hear the air hissing, as it forces the liquid through it. Just as "quickly as you get the inside covered, loosen the bung with your hammer, and if your work is well done, the bung will be thrown into the air with a report. Pour out the remaining liquid, warm it up, and go on with the rest. If the weather is cool, you had better put your barrel in the sun, turning it frequently and driving down the hoops, before you pour in the wax. This is to save your material, for if the barrel is cold, it will take a much heavier coating; and the main thing is simply to close all crevices. For honey in quantities of less than 100 Ibs., perhaps tin cans will be handier than barrels or kegs, for they can then be shipped as freight, without crating. Good thick honey will usually become solid at the approach^ of frosty/iweather, and perhaps the readiest means of getting it out of the barrel ii\such*cases, is to remove one of the heads, and take it out with a scoop. If it is quite hard, you may at first think it quite difficult to get a scoop down into it; but if you press steadily, and keep moving the scoop slightly, you will soon get down its whole depth. If the barrel is kept for some time near the stove, or in a very warm room, the honey will become liquid enough to be drawn out through a large sized honey gate. After the head of a barrel has been iaken out, the barrel should be waxed again before using, around the head that has been removed. Get out all the honey you can, by warming and allowing it to drain, and then with a tea-kettle of hot water, clean off every particle of honey. The rinsings may be saved and fed to the bees that there be no waste. As barrels are apt to get musty, or give the honey a taste, I would advise washing and lightly coating them every season, before being used again. After having been once coated, a very small quantity of paraffine will answer perfectly, the second time. I should have no hesitation in using any kind of a barrel for honey, if it were first scalded, allowed to dry thoroughly, and then perfectly coated with paraffine. If the barrel is dry and warm, or slightly hot, there will never be any danger of its cleaving from the wood, as wax sometimes does. Paraffine has neither taste nor smell, and does not decay as wax does, when exposed to dampness or the action of liquids. Caution:—A mixture of wax and rosin was at one time used for coating barrel, and after giving it, as I thought, a thorough test, I used it for a whole crop of honey. The result was that the honey tasted of rosin after being in the barrels over winter, and it was sold at lOc, when it would otherwise have brought 15c. This is quite a serious matter, as some of the Journals seem to be still recommending the rosin. BASSWOOD. With perhaps the single exception of white clover, the bass wood, or linden as it is often called, furnishes more honey than any other one plant or tree known. It is true, that it does not yield honey every season, but what plant or tree does V It occasionally gives us such an immense flood of honey, that we can afford to wait a season or two if need be, rather than depend on sources that yield more regularly, yet in much smaller amounts. If a beekeeper is content to wait—say ten or fifteen years for the realization of his hopes, or if he has an interest in providing for the beekeepers of a future generation, it will pay him to plant basswoods. A tree that was set out just about 10 years ago, on one of our streets, now furnishes a profusion of blossoms, almost every year, and from the way the bees work on them, I should judge it furnished considerable honey. A hundred such trees in the vicinity of an apiary, would be, without doubt, of great value. See ARTIFICIAL PASTURAGE. Our 4000 trees were planted in the spring of 1872, and are now— 1877—many of them bearing fair loads of blossoms. We made some experiments with BASSWOOD. basswood seeds, but they proved mostly failures, as have nearly all similar ones we have heard from. By far the best and cheapest way* is to get small trees from the forest. These can be obtained in almost any quantity, from any piece of woodland from which stock have been excluded. Cattle feed upon the young basswoods with great avidity, and pasturing our woodlands is eventually going to cut short the young growth of these trees from our forests, as well as of many others that are valuable. We planted trees all the way from one to ten feet in height. The larger ones have as a general rule done best. AMERICAN LINDEN OB BASSWOOD. (Tilia Americana.} The above will enable any one to at once distinguish the basswood when seen. The clusters of little balls with their peculiar leaf attached to the seed stems, are to be seen hanging from the branches the greater part of the summer, and the appearance, both before and after blossoming, is pretty much the same, The blossoms are small, of a light 26 BEE-DKESS. yellow color and rather pretty; the honey is secreted in the inner side of the thick fleshy petals. When it is profuse, it will sparkle like dewdrops, as shown at A, if a cluster •of blossoms is held up to the sunlight. Basswrood and perhaps most other forest trees require shade, especially when young; and much to our surprise, some that were planted directly under some large white oak trees, have done better than any of the rest. Who has not noticed exceedingly thrifty basswoods growing in the midst of a clump of briars and bushes of all sorts V I would place the trees not more than 12 feet apart, for it is an easy matter to thin them out whenever they are found too close. A neighbor has planted basswoods entirely round his farm on the road sides, and they add much to the comfort of travellers, are pretty to the sight, and, without doubt, will furnish honey enough, in time, to pay all expenses. The best yield of honey we have ever had from a single hive, in one day, was from the basswood bloom; the amount was 43 Ibs. in three days. The best wTe ever recorded from clover, was 10 Ibs. in one day. The honey from the basswood has a strong, aromatic or mint flavor, and we can tell when the blossoms are out, by the perfume about the hives. The taste of the honey also indicates to the apiarist the very day the bees commence work on it. The honey, if extracted before it is sealed over, when it is coming in rapidly, has the distinctive flavor so strong as^to be very disagreeable to some persons. My wife likens it to the smell and taste of turpentine or camphor, and very much dislikes it, when just gathered, but when sealed over and fully ripened in the hive, she thinks it delicious, as does Almost every person. BX!XS~BI&!EAX>. A term in common use, applied to pollen when stored in the combs. In olden times, when bees were killed with sulphur to get at the honey, more or less pollen was usually found mixed with the honey; it has something of a "bready" taste, and hence, probably, has its name. Since the advent of the extractor, and section boxes, it is very rare to find pollen in the honey designed for table use. See POLLEN. BX2B-DR22SS. Before the advent of the Italians, and the convenient smokers we now have, it was thought best to have a dress, or sort of " jacket," attached to the veil, with sleeves for the protection of the operator, while working among the hives\ BEE-DBESS. 27 BEE HUNTING. Such things are now, I believe, almost out of date, with the exception of veils, and the gloves that are used to some extent. The veils, without doubt, are often useful; but I am so well satisfied that even a beginner will get along better and with less stings, with his bare hands than with any kind of gloves, that I have no hesitation in advising him to have nothing to do with them. Have your smoker in good trim, and there is hardly a necessity of your being stung at all. While I cannot think it best to advise a dress particularly for bee work, I feel that it is a very wise precaution to have your ordinary attire of such a nature that bees may not get under the clothing; many severe stings are received in this way, from bees having no ill will at all, but only stinging because pressed by the clothing. When bees are shaken or dropped off the combs, they are very apt to crawl up ones feet, and I know of few things more annoying, than the sengatian of a bee crawling up ones leg when he is too busy to stop and stamp until it drops out of its unpleasant (to all parties concerned) lodging place, or stings and has it done with, as he is pretty sure to do if you are not careful. If you wear flannels, and have them tucked inside your stockings, this cannot happen; or if you wear boots and have your pants tucked in your boot tops, you are bee proof in this respect. I prefer low shoes in the summer, and light clothing for out door work, and when I am going to shake bees off the frames, I always put my pant legs inside my stockings, even at the risk of being stared at by visitors. If you are obliged to handle bees in cool weather, or so late in the day that they have ceased flying, they are very apt to crawl under your coat or vest, and sometimes up your sleeves. 1 do not mind the stings so much as the time it takes to get them out; and I dislike to run any risk of carrying them into the presence of others, who may not be so indifferent to stings as I am. Some years ago, I wore shirts that buttoned up in front, and the hybrids seemed especially fond of getting inside my shirt whenever I particularly desired them outside. I am not partial to new fashions in clothing, and when my wife made a shirt that buttoned down the back, she rather expected a sermon on the folly of —well, she heard in place of objections, a declaration that I would never wear any other, because they were bee-proof. For the same reason, I prefer the sleeves close at the wrist, and my whole clothing, in general, so close and free from openings that a bee can crawl up my shoes, and go clear to the top of my head and fly off, without any trouble to either himself or myself, on the principle of, " Live and let live." When at work among the hives, if bees are scattered about on the ground, I am always careful about stepping oil them, or so near that they may crawl up rny person; and nothing makes me more nervous than to have visitors who will walk right among them with their careless feet, crushing them into the dust. If it were right to return evil for evil, I should sometimes think it was good enough for them, if they did get a sting or two. The natural home of the honey bee is the forest, and if they consent to take up their abode on the ground at our very doors, we certainly should forbear stepping on them when we pay them a visit. I have said nothing about the attire of ladies who work in the apiary, but I presume I have given them a sufficient idea of what is needed, to enable them to so arrange their clothing as to avoid stings as much as possible. When bees are coming in heavily laden, we should all have respect enough for them, to avoid standing in front of their hives, or walking very near to their entrances. If they are scattered about on the ground, step around them, and there will be Very little danger of the stings that we often hear of, because a bee becomes accidentally entangled in the clothing. See VEILS. BUS HURTTING-. I have warned you so often, my friends, against leaving sweets of any kind about the apiary, and about being careful not to let the bees get to robbing each other, that it may seem a little queer, to be directed how best to encourage and develop this very robbing propensity, in these little friends of ours. The only season in which we can trap bees is when they will rob briskly, at home; for when honey is to be found in the flowers ,in plenty, they will hardly deign to notice our bait of even honey in the comb. Before starting out, it will be policy to inform yourself of all the bees kept in the vicinity, for you might otherwise waste much time in following lines that lead into the hives of your neighbors. You should be at least a mile from any one who has a hive of bees when you commence operations, and it were safer to be two miles. I do not mean by this, to say that there are no bee trees near large apiaries, for a number have been found within a half mile of our own, and an experienced hand would have but little trouble in finding more, iii all probability; but those BEE HUNTING. 28 BEE HUNTING. who are just learning, would be very likely to get very much perplexed and bothered by domesticated bees mixing with the wild ones. Perhaps the readiest means of getting a line started, is to catch the bees that will be found on the flowers, especially in the early part of the day. Get them to take a sip of the honey you have brought for the purpose, and they will, true to their instinctive love of gain, speed themselves home with their load, soon to return for another. To find the tree, you have only to watch and see where they go. Very simple, is it not? It certainly is on paper, but it usually involves a deal of hard work, when carried out in practice. You can get along with very simple implements, but if your time is valuable, it may pay to go out fully equipped. For instance, a small glass tumbler will answer to catch bees with, and after you have caught one, you can set the glass over a piece of honey comb. Now cover it with your handkerchief to stop his buzzing against the glass, and he will soon discover the honey, and "load up." Keep your eye on him, and as soon as he is really at work at the honey, gently raise the glass and creep away, where you may get a good view of proceedings. As soon as he takes wing, he will circle about the honey, as a young bee does in, front of the hive, that he may know the spot when he comes back; for a whole " chunk" of honey, during the dry autumn days, is quite a little gold mine in his estimation. There may *be a thousand or more hungry mouths to feed, away out in the forest in his leafy home, for aught we know. If you are quick enough to keep track of his eccentric circles and oscillations, you will see that his circles becomeparger and larger, and that each time he comes round, he sways to one side; that!is, instead of making the Jioney the centre of his circles, he makes it almost on one edge, so that the last few times lie comes round he simply comes back after he has started home, and throws a loop, as it were, about the honey to make sure of it for the last time. Now you can be pretty sure which way his home lies almost the very first circuit he makes, for he has his home in mind all the time, and bears more and more toward it. If you can keep your eye on him, until he finally takes the " bee line " for home, you do pretty well, for a new hand can seldom do this. After he is out of sight, you have only to wait until he comes back, which he surely j will do, if honey is scarce. Of course, if his home is near by, he will get back soon; and to determine how far it is, by the length of time he is gone, brings in another very important point, * The honey the bees get from the flowers, is very thin honey; in fact, rather nearer sweetened water, than honey, and if we wish a bee to load'up and fly at about a naturalu gait," we'should give him honey diluted with water to about this consistency. Unless "you do, he will^not only take a great deal more time in [loading up, but the thick honey is so muehjheavier, he will-very likely stagger under the load, and make a very crooked bee line of his homeward path. Besides, he will take much more time to unload. Sometimes, after circling about quite a time, he will stop] tojtake breath before going home,'which is apt to mislead the hunter, unless he is experienced; all this is avoided by filling your honey comb with honey and water, instead of thejhoney as we usually find it. Now it takes^quite a little time, to get a bee caught and started iii^the work, and that we may be busy, we will have several bees started at the same time ; and to do this expeditiously.Jwe will use a bee hunting box made as in'thejfollowing cut. ____j2iL_ BOX FOR BEE HUNTING. :> ___w This is simplyXJight box about 4J inches square; the bottom is left open, and the top is closed with a sheet of glass that slides easily in saw cuts made near the upper edge. About a half inch below the glass, is a small feeder, quite similar to the one figured in FEEDING AND FEEDEKS. HOW TO USE THE HUNTING BOX. Take with your box, about a pint of diluted honey in a bottle. If you fill the bottle half full of thick honey, and then fill it up with warm water, you will have it about right. In the fall of the year, you will be more likely to find bees on the flowers, in the early part of the day. When you get on the ground, BEE HUNTING. 29 near some forest, where you suspect the presence of wild bees, pour a little of your honey into the feeder, and cautiously set the box over the first bee you find upon the flowers. As soon as the box is well over the flower, close the bottom with your hand, and he will soon buzz up against the glass. Catch as many as you wish, in the same way, and they will soon be sipping the honey. Before any have filled themselves, ready to fly, set your box on some elevated point, such as the top of a stump in an open space in the field, and draw back the glass slide. Stoop down now, and be ready to keep your eye on him, whichever way he may turn. If you keep your head low, you will be more likely to have the sky as a background. If you fail in following one, you must try the next, and as soon as you get a sure line on one, as he bears finally for home, be sure to mark it by some object that you can remember. If you are curious to know how long they are gone, you can, with some white paint in a little vial and a pencil brush, mark one of them on the back. This is quite a help where you have two or more lines working from the same bait. When a bee comes back, you will recognize him by the peculiar inquiring hum, like robbers in front of a hive where they have once had a taste of spoils. If the tree is near by, each one will bring others along in his wake, and soon your box will be humming with a throng so eager, that a further filling of the feeder from the bottle will be needed. As soon as you are pretty well satisfied in which direction they are located, you can close the glass slide and move along on the line, near to the woods. Open the box, and you will soon have them just as busy, again ; mark the line, and move again, and you will very soon follow them to their home. To aid you in deciding just where they are, you can move off to one side and start a cross line. Of course the tree will be found just where these lines meet ; when you get about where you think they should be, examine the trees carefully, especially all the knot holes, or any place that might allow bees to enter and find a cavity. If you place yourself so that the bees will be between you and the sun, you can see them plainly, even if they are among the highest branches. Kemember you are to make a careful and minute examination of every tree, little and big, body and limbs, even if it does make your neck ache. It is a good thing to look up once in a while, just as it is a good thing to go out into the woods, and get a view of outside things generally, now and then. If you do not find them by carefully looking^the trees over, go back and get your hunting box, bring it up to the spot, and give them" feed " until you get a quart or more at work. You can then see pretty clearly where they go. If you do not find them the first day, you can readily start them again almost any time, for they are very quick to start, when they have once been at work, even though it is several days afterward. Bees are sometimes started by burning what is called a " smudge." Get some old bits of comb containing bee bread as well as honey, and burn them on a small tin plate, by setting it over a little fire. The bees will be attracted by the odor of the burning honey and comb, and if near, will sometimes come in great numbers. Oil of anise is sometimes used, to attract them by its strong odor. We have had the best success in getting them from the flowers as we have directed. A spy glass is very convenient in finding where the bees go in, especially if the tree is very tall ; even the toy spy-glasses sold for 50c. or a dollar, are sometimes quite a help. The most serviceable, however, are the achromatic glasses that cost about $3.00. The very best thing for the purpose is an Opera glass such as can be purchased for about $5.00. With these we can use both eyes, and the field is so broad that no time is lost in getting the glass instantly on the spot. We can, in fact, see bees with them in the tops of the tallest trees, almost as clearly as we can see them going into hives placed on the ground. They can also be used to follow a bee on the wing, as he leaves the hunting box. If one's time is valuable, an opera glass will be a very good investment. After you have found the tree, I presume you will be in a hurry to get the bees that you know are there, and the honey that may be there. Do not fix your expectations too high, for you may not get a single pound of the latter. Of two trees that we have recently taken, one contained just about as much honey as we had fed them, and the other contained not one visible cell full ! The former were fair hybrids, and the latter well marked Italians. If the tree is not a valuable one, and stands where timber is cheap and plenty, perhaps the easiest way may be to cut it down. This may result in a mashed up heap of ruins, with combs, honey, and bees all mixed up with dirt and rubbish, or it may fall so as to strike on the limbs or small trees, and thus ease" its fall in such a'way as to do verylittle injury to the hive of the BEE CLIMBEBS. 80 BEE HUNTING. forest. The chances are rathe'r in favor of the former, and on many accounts it is safer to climb the tree and let the bee hive down with a rope. If the hollow is in the body of the tree or so situated that it cannot be cut off above and below, the combs may be taken out and let down in a pail or basket; for the brood combs, and such as contain but little honey, the basket will be rather preferable. The first thing, however, will be to climb the tree, and as I should be very sorry to give any advice in my ABC book that might in any way lead to loss of life, I will, at the outset, ask you not to attempt climbing, unless you are, or can be, a very careful person. An old gentleman who has just been out with us remarked that he once knew a very expert climber who took all the bees out of the trees for miles around, but was finally killed instantly, by letting his hands slip, as he was getting above a large knot in the tree. We do not wish to run any risks, where human life is at stake. For climbing large trees, a pair of climbers are used, such as is shown in the following cut. CLIMBERS FOB BEE HUNTERS. The iron part is made of a bar 18 inches long, I wide by 1 thick. At the lower end, it is bent to accommodate the foot as shown, and the spurs are made of the best steel, carefully aud safely welded on. These points should be sharp, and somewhat chisel shaped, that they may be struck safely into the wood of the tree; the straps will be readily understood by inspection. When in use, the ring, A, is slipped over the spur, B, and the straps are both buckled up safely. If the tree is very large, the climber provides himself with a tough withe or whip, of some tough green bough, and bends this so it will go around the trunk, while an end is held in either hand. As he climbs upward, this is hitched up the trunk. If he keeps a sure and firm hold on this whip, and strikes his feet into the trunk firmly, he can go up the most forbidding trees, rapidly and safely. A lig-ht line, a clothes line for instance, should be tied around his waist, that he may draw up such tools as he may need. The tools needed, are a sharp axe, hatchet, saw, and an auger to bore in to see how far the hollow extends. If the bees are to be saved, the limb or tree should be cut off above the hollow, and allowed to fall. A stout rope may be then tied about the log hive, passed over some limb above, the end brought down and wrapped about a tree until the hive is cut off ready to lower. When it is down, let it stand an hour or two, or until sundown, when all the bees will have found and entered the hive. Cover the entrance with wire cloth, and take it home. . If you want only the honey, and do not care for the bees, you can slab off one side of the hollow, cut out the combs, and let them down in pails. The bees can very often be saved in this way, as well as the former. Fix the brood combs about the right distance apart, in a pail or basket; the bees will in time collect about them, and may then, toward dark, be carried safely home. Many bee hunters brimstone the bees, but I am so averse to any such method of killing bees, that I have not even the patience to describe it. Sometimes the hollow is below the limbs; in this case, the climber passes a surcingle about him. under his arms, around the tree, and in this position chops the bees out. I have said nothing about smoke or veils, for so far as my experience goes, none seem to be needed. The bees become so frightened by the chopping, that they are perfectly conquered and cease entirely, to .act on the offensive. It may be well to have some smoking rotten wood near, and a bellows smoker would be very convenient to drive the bees out of the way, many times; After you have got them down where the combs can be reached, the usual directions for transferring are to be followed. A beekeeper who has a taste for rustic work, might set the log up in his apiary, just to show the contrast between the old style of bee-keeping and the new. Some very interesting facts are to be picked up in bee hunting. One of the trees we cut recently contained comb as much as a yard long, and not more than 8 inches wide in the widest part. It has been said that bees in a state of nature select cavities best adapted to their needs. I am inclined to think this very poor BEE HUNTING. reasoning. If a farmer allowed nature to take care of his corn fields, he would get a very poor crop, and from what I have seen of bee trees, I should judge the poor fellows • need to be taken care of, almost as much as the corn. We frequently get 100 Ibs. of comb from a hive but I never knew a bee tree to give any such amount, as the product of a single season. We sometimes find quite a quantity of honey in a tree, it is true, but it is usually old honey, and often the accumulation of several years. There are more bees in the woods than we perhaps have any idea of, especially, in the neighborhood of considerable apiaries. In one of my first trials at bee hunting I started a fine line, directly toward the woods, but I looked in vain for bees, after going into them, and finally gave it up. A few days afterward, I got an old hand at the business to hunt them up for me, and he almost at once pointed out a tree plainly visible from where they were baited, standing in the open lot. As the tree contained very thick old honey, it had probably stood there unnoticed for years, and yet it was in plain sight. The same hunter, very soon found another, but a little distance from this one. And within a few days, we have found two more in that same locality. Since these two have been carried away and domesticated in our apiary, we find the Italians apparently just as thick on the wild flowers as they were before, indicating that there are more trees in the same vicinity. DOES BEE HUNTING PAY ? If you can earn a dollar per day at some steady employment, I do not think it would, as a rule ; but there are doubtless localities where an expert would make it pay well, in the fall of the year. With the facilities we now have for rearing bees, a bee-keeper would stock an apiary much quicker 'by rearing the bees, than he would by bringing them home from the woods, and transferring. In the former case he would have nice straight combs, especially if he used the fdn., but the combs from the woods, would require a great amount of fussing with, and they would never be nearly as nice as those built on the fdn., even then. So much by way of discouragement. On the other hand, a ramble in the woods, such as bee hunting furnishes, is one of the most healthful forms of recreation that I know of; and it gives one a chance to study, not only the habits of the bees, but the flowers as well, for in hunting for a bee to start with, we find many plants that are curious 3J BEE-MOTH. and many that we would not otherwise know they frequented. In our recent trips, we were astonished to find the Simpson honey plant, of which so much has been said in our Journals recently, growing in our own neighborhood, and we saw the bees drinking the sweet water out of the little hollow balls, or rather pitcher shaped blossoms. Again, climbing and taking the bees out of one of the monarchs of the forest, is really one of the fine arts, if done safely; and I feel like taking off my hat in deference to the one who does the work nicely, something as I would to a renowned doctor or lawyer, or an expert mechanic. NEVER QUARREL ABOUT BEE TREES. When you have found your tree, go at once to the owner of the land, and get permission to take your bees. No matter what the law allows, do nothing in his absence you would not do if he were standing by, and do your work with as clear a conscience as you would work in your own bee yard. Many quarrels and disagreements and much hard feeling, have been engendered by cutting bee trees. If I am correctly informed, bees are the property of whoever finds them first; and on this account it is customary to cut the initials of the finder, with the date, in the body of the tree; but you have no more right to cut the owner's timber without permission than you have to cut his corn. I have never found any one inclined to be at all difficult, when they were politely asked for permission to get our bees out of the trees. I do not wonder that people feel cross when their timber is mutilated by roving idlers, and I can scarcely blame them for giving a wholesome lesson now and then just to remind us that we have laws in our country for their protection. I hope my readers. will have no disposition to trespass on the premises or rights of any one, without permission. The most difficult and particular person in your neighborhood, will, in all probability, be found pleasant and accommodating, if you go to him in a pleasant and neighborly way. BEE-MOTH. It is very likely that the moth worm is, as has been so often stated,the worst enemy the honey bee has—if we except ignorant bee-keepers—but if such is the case, we can consider ourselves very fortunate, for the moth is almost no enemy at all, to one who is well posted, and up with the times. When you hear a person complaining that the moth worm killed his bees, you can set him down at once, as knowing very little about bees; and if a BEE-MOTH. 32 hive is offered you, that has an attachment or trap to catch or kill moths, you can set the vender down as a vagabond and swindler. You can scarcely plead ignorance for him> for a man who will take upon himself the responsibility of introducing hives, without knowing something of our modern books and bee journals, should receive treatment sufficiently rough to send him home, or into some business he imderstands. When a colony gets weakened so much that it can not cover and protect its combs, robbers and moth-worms help themselves as a natural consequence, but either rarely do any harm if there is plenty of bees, and a clean tight hive. If a hive is so made that there are crevices which will admit a worm, and not allow a bee to go after him, it may make some trouble in almost any colony; and I can not remember that I ever saw a patented Moth Proof Hive that was not much worse in this respect than a plain simple box hive. A plain simple box is in fact all we want for a hive ; but as we must have the combs removable, we must have frames to hold them; and if these frames are made so that bees can get all round and about them, we have done all we can to make a moth proof hive. Of course colonies will at times get weakened ; and with the best of care, with the common bees especially, worms will sometimes be found in the combs. Now if you have the simple hive I shall recommend, you can very quickly take out the combs, and with the point of your knife, remove every web and worm, scrape off the debris, and assist the bees very much. If there is an accumulation of filth on the bottom board, lift out all the combs, and brush it all off, and be sure you crush all the worms in this filth for they will crawl right back into the hive, if carelessly thrown on the ground. If you keep only Italians, or even all hybrids, you may go over a hundred colonies and not find a single trace of a moth worm. At the very low price at which Italian queens are now to be purchased, it would seem that we are very soon to forget that a bee-moth ever existed, and the readiest way I know of to get combs that are badly infested, free from worms, is to hang them, one at a time, in the centre of a full hive of Italians. You will find all the webs and worms strewed around the entrance of the hive, in a couple of hours, and the comb cleaned up nicer than you could do it, if you were to sit down all day to the task. BEE-MOTH. HOW TO KEEP EMPTY COMBS SECURE FROM THE MOTH WORMS. If you have Italians only, you may have no trouble at all, without using any precaution ; but if there are black bees around you, kept in the old fashioned way, or in upatent hives," you will be very apt to have trouble, unless you ulook out." Suppose, for instance, you take a comb away from the bees during the summer months, and leave it in your honey house several days; if the weather is warm, you may find it literally infested with small worms, and in a few days more, the comb will be entirely destroyed. Combs partly filled with pollen seem to be the especial preference of these greedy, filthy looking pests, and I have sometimes thought they would do but little harm, were it not for the pollen they find to feed on. A few years ago, we used to have the same trouble with comb honey when taken from the hive during the early part of the season; but of late we have had less and less of it and the present season—1877—I have scarcely seen a moth worm in our comb honey at all, and we have not once fumigated our honey house. I ascribe it to the increase of the Italians, in our own apiary, and those all about us, for the greater part of the bees in the woods are now partly Italian. These have driven the moth before them to such an extent that they bid fair to soon become extinct. Perhaps much has been also done, by keeping all bits of comb out of their way ; no rubbish that would harbor them has been allowed to accumulate about the apiary, and as soon as any filth has been found containing them, it has been promptly burned. Those who take comb honey from hives of common bees are almost sure to find live worms in them, sooner or later. How do the worms get into a box of honey that is pasted up tightly, just as soon as the bees are driven out ? I presume they get in just as they get into the comb taken from a hive during warm weather. The moth has doubtless been all through the hive, for she can go where a bee can, and has laid the eggs in every comb, trusting to the young worms to evade the bees by some means after they are hatched. This explanation, I am well aware, seems rather unreasonable, but it is the only one I can give. In looking over hives of common bees, I have often seen moths dart like lightning from crevices, and have sometimes seen them dart among the bees and out again, but whether they can deposit an egg so quickly as this, I am unable to say. In taking combs from the hive BEE-MOTH. 33 BEE-MOTH. containing queen cells to be used in the lamp nursery, I have always had more or less trouble with these moth worms. The high temperature, and absence of bees, are very favorable to their hatching and growth, and after about 3 days, the worms are invariably found spinning their webs. If they are promptly picked out, for about a week, no more make their appearance, showing clearly that the eggs were deposited in the combs, while in the hive. When the queen cells are nearly ready to hatch, I often hear the queens gnawing out, by holding the comb close to-my ear; by the same means, I hear moth worms eating out their galleries along the comb, and more than once, I have mistaken them for queens. They are voracious eaters, and the " chank-iug " they make, when at full work, reminds one of a lot of hogs. As they are easily frightened, you must lift the comb with great care, to either see or hear them at their work. Their silken galleries are often constructed right through a comb of sealed brood, and they then make murderous work with the unmatched bees. Perhaps a single worm will mutilate a score of bees, before he is dislodged. These are found generally at the entrance of the hive in the morning, and numerous letters have been received from new beginners, asking why their bees should tear the unhatched brood out of the combs, and carry it out of the hives. I presume the moth is at the bottom of all, or nearly all, of these complaints. If you examine the capped brood carefully, you will see light streaks across the combs where these silken galleries are, and a pin, or knife point, will quickly pry his wormship out of his retreat. As the young worms travel very rapidly, it is quite likely the eggs may have been deposited on the frame or edges of the comb. It is a little more difficult to understand how they get into a honey box with only a small opening, but.I think it is done by the moth, while on the hive. You may perhaps have noticed that the moth webs are usually seen from one comb to another, and they seldom do very much mischief, unless there are two or more combs side by side. Well, if you, in putting your surplus combs away for winter, place them 2 or more inches apart, you will seldom have any trouble, even should you leave them undisturbed until the next July. There is no danger from worms, in any case, in the fall, winter or spring, for the worms cannot develop, unless they have a summer temper- ature, although they will live a long time in a dormant state if not killed by severe freezing weather. I have kept combs in my. barn two years or more; but they were not removed from the hives until fall, and were kept during the summer months, in a close box, where no moth could possibly get at them. I have several times had worms get among them when I was so careless as to leave them exposed during warm weather, and one season, I found nearly 1000 combs so badly infested that they would have" been almost worthless, in less than a week. The combs were all hung up in the honey house, and then about a Ib. of brimstone was thrown on a shovel of coals in an old kettle. This was placed in the room, and all doors and windows carefully closed. Next morning, I found most of the worms dead, but a few that were encased in heavy webs were still alive; after another and more severe fumigation, not a live one was to be found, and my combs were saved. I have several times since, fumigated honey in boxes in the same way. After the bees have died in a hive, it should never be left exposed to robbers and moths,but should be carried in-doors at once, or carefully closed up. If you have not bees either by artificial or natural swarming, to use the combs before warm weather, you should keep a careful watch over them, for a great amount of mischief may be done in a very few days. I once removed some combs, heavy with honey, in August, and thinking no worms would get into them so late, I delayed looking at them. A month later, the honey began to run out on the floor, and upon attempting to lift out a comb, it was found impossible to do so. When all were lifted up at once, a mass of webs nearly as large as one's head was found, in place of the honey and combs. So much for not keeping a careful watch of such property. By way of summing up, I would say: Use plain, simple, unpatented hives, get Italians as soon as you can, keep your colonies strong, be sure that none of them by any means become queenless, and you need have no solicitude in regard to the bee-moth among your bees. If you have spare combs, or comb honey that has been taken away from the bees in warm weather, keep an eye on it, and either destroy the worms as soon as they appear, or fumigat& them as I have directed. When your eye has become trained, you will detect the very first appearance of a worm, by its excrement, in the shape of a BEES. 34 fine white powder. We sometimes hunt them out thus and destroy them, when they are so small as to be only just visible to the naked eye. Giving your combs a good freeze, say a temperature of 15 or 20°, will answer the same purpose as the fumigation. BUSS. Every body knows what bees are, I suppose, and therefore I need not attempt to give you a picture of them. If you contemplate becoming a bee-keeper, I would advise you to get a hive of them, and then to use your own eyes and ears, to see if what I tell you about them is true. At present we have but two varieties of bees that are in common use for the production of honey, and with the vast difference in favor of the Italians, we shall very soon have only the Italians. The Egyptians have been tried in our country to some extent, but are I believe inferior to the Italians, besides being much more vindictive. Bees from the island of Cyprus have been talked of somewhat, but so far as I can learn, they differ but little, if any, from the pure Italians. Albino bees have also been talked about, but after testing them in my own apiary, I find them little different from the common Italians. The fringe or down that appears on the rings of the abdomen of young bees is a trifle whiter than usual, but no one would observe it unless his attention was called to it. The queens are very yellow, but the workers, as honey gatherers, are decidedly inferior, even to the second generation; and when we select light colored bees or queens for several successive generations, if we are not careful, we shall have a worker progeny lacking as honey gatherers, and in ability to endure. By selection, we can get almost anything we want, and that quite speedily with bees, for we can produce several generations in a single season, if need be. It is said in the South, that they have two varieties of the common or black bee, but it is quite likely they are one and the same thing, for bees in the same neighborhood, vary much in color; the bees of one colony may be almost a brown, while in another they are almost black. I shall speak, in this book, of but two kinds, the black or common and the Italian. HOW BEES GROW. During warm weather, while your bees are gathering honey, open your hive in the middle of the day, and put in the center, a frame containing a sheet of fdn; examine it every night, morning and noon, until you see eggs in the cells. If you put it between two combs containing brood, you will very BEES. likely find eggs in the cells the next day. If you have never seen an egg that is to produce a bee, you may have to look very sharp the first time, for they are white like polished ivory, and scarcely larger than one of the periods in this print. They will be seen in the center of the cell attached to the comb by one end. As soon as you discover eggs, mark down the date. If the weather is favorable, these eggs will hatch out in about 3 days or a little more, and in place of the egg, you will, if you look sharp enough, see a tiny white worm or grub floating in a minute drop of milky fluid. If you watch the bees, you will find them incessantly poking their heads into these cells, and it is likely that the milky fluid is placed on and about the egg, a little before the inmate breaks its way out of the shell. I infer this, because I have never been able to get the eggs to hatch, when taken away from the bees, although I have carefully kept the temperature at the same point as in the hive. These worms are really the young bee, in its larval state, and we shall in future call them larvae. They thrive and grow very rapidly, on their bread and milk diet, as you will see if you look at them often. They will more than double in size in a single half day, and in the short space of 3 days, they will have grown from a mere speck to the size of a full grown bee, or so as to completely fill the cell. This seems almost incredible, but there they are, right before your eyes. I presume it is owing to the highly concentrated nature of this same "bread and milk" food that the workers are so constantly giving them, that they grow so rapidly. If you take the comb away from the bees for a little while, you will see the larvae opening their mouths to be fed, like a nest of young birds, for all the world. 1 3 4 5 7 15 18 FliOM THE EGG TO THE BEE. The figures underneath are intended to represent the age in days. First is the egg just as it is laid; next the larva just after it has broken the egg shell on the third day. During the fourth and fifth days, they grow very rapidly, but it is difficult to fix any precise mark in regard to the size. On the seventh day the larva has straightened himself BEES. 35 BEES. out, and the worker bees have capped him over. I have made a pretty accurate experiment on this point, and it was just six days and seven hours after the first egg was laid, when they got it completely capped over. Just when they begin to have legs and eyes, I do not know; but I have found that the wings are about the last part of the wrork. We are all of us too ignorant, by far, on this matter, and I suggest that we set to work and investigate the matter thoroughly. The eggs of the common fowl have been broken, and drawings made of the embryo, every day from the 1st to the 21st. Can we not do as much for the science of apiculture V After the larvae are 3 days old, or between 6 and 7 days from the time when the egg was laid, you will find the bees sealing up some of the largest. This sealing is done with a sort of paper-like substance, and while it shuts the young bee up, it still allows him a chance to breathe through the pores of the capping. He is given his last feed, and the nurses seem to say, " There! you have been fed enough; spin your cocoon, and take care of your self." I wish, my friend, I could tell you what happens after this, but I have not yet been able to see. As a general thing, the young bee is left covered up until he gnaws off the capping, and comes out a perfect bee. This will be in about 21 days from the day the egg was laid, or it may be 20, if the weather is very favorable; therefore he is shut up 13 or 14 days. Now there is an exception to this last statement, and it has caused not a little trouble and solicitude on the part of beginners. During very warm summer weather, the bees, for one reason or another, decide to let a part of their children go " bareheaded," arid therefore we find, on opening a hive, whole patches of young bees looking like silent corpses with their white heads in tiers just about on a level with the comb. At this stage of growth, they are motionless, of course, and so the young bee-keeper sends us a postal card, telling us the brood in his hives is all dead. Some have imagined that the extractor killed them, others that it was foul brood; and I often think, when reading these" letters, of the family which moved from the city into the country; when their beans began to come up, they thought the poor things had made a mistake, by coining up wrong end first; so they pulled them all up, and replanted them with the bean part in the ground, leaving the proper roots sprawling up in the air. My friend, you can rest assured that the bees almost always know when it is safe to let the childrens' heads go uncovered. As it is, many times, very important to know just when a queen was lost, or when a colony swarmed, you should learn these data thoroughly; for instance, it will be safe to say, 3i days in the egg, 3£ in the larvae, and 14 days sealed up. The capping of the worker brood is nearly flat; that of the drones, raised or convex; so much so, that we can at a glance tell when drones are reared in worker cells, as is sometimes the case. The young bee, when he gnaws his way out of the cell, commences to rub his nose, straighten out his feathers, and then to push his way among the busy throng, doubtless rejoicing that he too is one of that vast commonwealth. Nobody says a word to him, or, apparently, takes any notice of him, but for all that, they, as a whole, I am well convinced, feel encouraged and rejoice in their way, at a house full of young folks. Keep a colony without young bees for a time, and you will see a new energy infused into all hands, just as soon as young bees begin to gnaw out. If you vary your experiment by putting a frame of Italian eggs into a colony of common bees, you will be better able to follow the young bee as it matures. The first day, he does little but crawl round; but about the next day, he will be found dipping greedily into the cells of unsealed honey, and so on for a week or more; after about the first day, he will also begin to look after the wants of the unsealed larvae, and will very soon assist in furnishing the milky food for them. While doing this, a large amount of pollen is used, arid it is supposed that this larvae food is pollen and honey, partially digested by the young or nursing bees. Bees of this age, or a little older, supply the royal jelly for the queen cells, which is the same thing as the food given the very small larvae. Just before the larvae for the worker bees and drones are sealed up, they are fed on a coarser and less perfectly digested mixture of honey and pollen. The young bees will have a white downy look, until they are a full week old, and they have a peculiar look that shows them to be young until they are quite two weeks old. At about this latter age, they are generally the active comb builders of the hive. When they are a week or 10 days old, they will take their first flight out of doors, and I know of no prettier sight in the apiary, than a host of young Italians taking their play spell in BEES ON SHAKES 36 BOEAGE. the open air, in front of their hive; their antics and gambols remind one of a lot of young lambs at play. It is also very interesting to see these little chaps when they bring their first load of pollen from the fields. If there are plenty of bees in the hive, of the *proper age, they will not usually take up this work until about two weeks old. The first load of pollen is to a young bee, just about what the first pair of pants is to a boy baby. Instead of going straight into the hive with his load, as the veterans do, a vast amount of circling round the entrance must be done, and even after he has once alighted he takes wing again, rushes all through the hive, jostles the nurses, drones, and perhaps queen too, and says as plainly as could words, uLook here! This is I; I gathered this, all myself. Is it not nice V " We might imagine some old veteran who has brought thousands of such loads, answering gruffly, " Well, suppose you did; what of it V You had better give it to the nurses, and start after more, instead of making all this row and wasting time, when there are so many mouths to feed." I said we might imagine this, for I have never been able to find any indication of any un-kindness, inside of a bee hive. No one scolds or finds fault, and the children are never driven off to work, unless they wish. If they are improvident and starvation comes, they all starve alike, and as I do believe, without a single hard feeling or bit of censure toward any one. They all work together, just as your right hand assists your left, and if we would understand the economy of the bee hive, it were well to bear this point in mind. Shortly after the impulse for pollen gathering, comes that for honey gathering; and the bee is probably in his prime, as a worker, when he is a month old. At this age he can, like a man of 40, " turn his hand " to almost any of the duties of the hive; but if the hive is well supplied with workers of all ages, he would probably do most effective service in the fields, see AGE OF BEES. If a colony is formed of young bees entirely, they will sometimes go out into the fields for pollen when but 5 or 6 days old. Also when a colony is formed wholly of adult bees, they will build comb, feed the larvae, construct queen cells, and do the work generally that is usually done by the younger bees, but it is probably better economy to have bees of all ages in the hive. BEES OK SHARDS. There are ca- ses, doubtless, where it is advantageous to both parties, to let bees out oh shares, but as a general thing, I would advise owning your bees, even though it be but a single colony, before you commence to build up an apiary. It almost always happens that one of the parties is dissatisfied; and as is frequently the case with such partnership arrangements, both the parties have been wronged, to hear their story for it. I believe it is customary for one of the partners to furnish the bees, and the other to do the work; at the end of the season, everything is divided equally. If new hives, Italian queens &c., are to be used, the expense is equally divided. The division of stock is usually made as soon as the honey season is over, and each party takes his chances of wintering. To prevent any misunderstanding, I would advise that the whole agreement be put in writing, and that whenever something turns up for which no provision has been made, some agreement be made in regard to it, and that this be put in writing also. Instead of inquiring what other folks do, arrange the matter just as you can agree, and make up your minds in the outset that you are going to remain good friends, even if it costs all the bees and your whole summer's work. BLUE TKXSTXiZS. This plant grows in great profusion in many of the Southern and middle States, but the principal reports seem to come from Virginia, and the valley of the Shenandoah. As it blossoms fully four months in the year, and produces a beautiful white honey, it would seem that it might well deserve a place among the plants on a honey farm. If we are correct, it needs but little coaxing to cover whole farms, and in Va., we are told there are hundreds of acres of it growing wild, as a weed. Over 200 Ibs of white box honey have been reported from it, from a single colony, in one summer. A field of blue is no doubt a very pretty sight to the bee-keeper, but to the farmers, who find it a great pest, it may not look so handsome. We have really no right to make our honey farm a nuisance to the neighborhood, by bringing in foul weeds; so perhaps you had better take your bees down where it grows, instead of sending for seeds. BORAGE (Bwago Offitinalis). This has been at different times recommended for bees, but as those making the experiment of planting several acres of it did not repeat it in succeeding years, I think we are justified in concluding it did not pay. I have raised it in our garden, and some seasons BUCKWHEAT. BUCKWHEAT. the bees seem very busy on it. It has a small blue blossom, and grows so rapidly, that a fine mass of bloom may be secured by simply planting the seeds on the ground where you dig your early potatoes. If it is to be raised by the acre, it should be sown at about the same timje and much in the same manner, as corn in lulls, or broadcast. BUCKySTHZjAT. We have had reports from three different kinds; the black, the gray, and the Silver Hull. The two former are old varieties, and are much alike; the latter is new, and as usual, great things are claimed for it. We have had a piece near us this season; it has given about as much honey as the common varieties, but so far as we can discover, but little if any more. It bids fair to give a greater yield, and is therefore, perhaps, somewhat preferable. It will certainly pay for bee-keepers to raise buckwheat, and if they are not land owners, they can furnish the seed to the adjoining farmers free, or pay them a dollar or two per acre for the honey it yields. Although this is not a buckwheat country, I think it pays me, taking seasons as they come, to pay $1.00 per acre for all that is sown within H miles of my apiary, and if there should be 50 acres sown, it would please me all the better. Some such plan as this, is probably the safest investment we can make in the way of artificial pasturage. The honey is dark, and but few people like the flavor of it, after they have used it a little time, but it seems perfectly wholesome for winter, saves purchasing sugar, all trouble of feeding, encourages brood rearing in the fall, and keeps the bees away from the groceries and dwellings, to a certain extent. CULTIVATION. Buckwlieat will grow and blossom on almost any soil, but if you want it to pay for either honey or grain, it should have good rich land. It is sown broadcast, about 3 pecks of seed per acre. The best crop of buckwheat honey we ever had here, was from a piece prepared for, and planted with corn. The corn was so nearly killed by cut worms that it was harrowed over nicely and sown to buckwheat in the latter part of June. This is almost a month earlier than buckwheat is usually sown here, but the yield was such that, from the two acres, we had at least 200 -Ibs of comb honey, besides the large amount that must have gone into the brood apartments. The bees that gathered the largest part of this were dark hybrids; the pure Italians were at the same time storing white honey from red clover. It was amusing to see hives side by side both working in the section boxes, one of which made white combs and honey, like that in June, while the other built combs of a golden yellow, and stored it with the dark rich looking buckwheat honey. As the hybrids gave quite a large crop of this dark honey, I began to be a little partial to them, but after the boxes were all removed, I found they had put it all above, and left their brood apartment almost empty, while the more prudent Italians, had filled the brood combs until they were in excellent condition for winter. .It has been several times advanced that the blacks and hybrids are ahead, when nothing but buckwheat honey is to be found in the fields. c. CACHBS FOR QUEENS. These are for introducing, for sending them both by mail and express, and for keeping them safely many times about the apiary, especially when we find several just hatched out in a hive. For introducing only, a cage made by simply rolling up a piece of wire cloth will do, many times, but as this gives us no perfectly sure method of supplying the queen with food, I can but regard it unsafe, for queens have frequently been found starved when the cage was pushed between two combs of sealed honey, the bees having removed all the honey from around the cage, as they almost always do when a comb is crushed. To be on the safe side, it would seem best to have a good supply of food in the cage at all times. If this supply is given in the form of honey, there is almost always a liability of the bees and queen getting more or less daubed or smeared with it, and unless this can be soon removed by other bees they are sure to die sooner or later, for the breathing tubes located in different parts of their bodies are easily closed by sugar or honey, if it is allowed to dry on them. Honey in a sponge has been one of the most successful ways of giving a supply for long journeys, but even this is apt to give them a dauby look, and I have several times found bees, and sometimes the queen, tvedged into or under the sponge, dead. One of these was an imported queen, and as all the bees with her were spry and active, I could but think she had got entangled under the sponge, and died from this alone. Candy has been used for some time quite successfully ; the only difficulty seems to be in providing just enough moisture and no more. Besides the above mentioned wants, we Want a queen cage that can be cheaply made, especially if we are going to sell queens for a dollar. I will tell you how we make them, and as it involves principles that should be observed in the manufacture of any article by machinery, I will give the details rather at length. Get some clear pine lumber, dressed on both sides, to about I in thickness. Cut it up in lengths of 6 or 8 feet as may be most convenient. Saw these into strips 2 inches in width. With a very sharp centre bit, we bore holes in the strips If in diameter; the holes, which are bored so nearly through as to leave about i of wood at the bottom, are just i inch apart; that is, there is just I inch of solid wood left between each two holes. The holes can be bored by hand, but a lathe is much more expeditious. If the small hole made clear through by the spur of the centre bit is set over a small pin or nail every time the stick is moved along, they can be spaced very quickly, and very exactly. The pin is of course driven in the block of wood fastened to the movable centre of the lathe. We bore about 4 holes a minute, on an average. Now if we should tack wire cloth over these holes, and saw up the stick, we should have queen cages, but we are not nearly ready to do this yet. We do not wish to be to the trouble of prying out the tacks every time we wish to open our cage, and so we must make some kind of a nice little door for the purpose. As boring holes and hinging doors is too slow if we can get rid of it, we make openings into all the cages at once, by plowing a groove the whole length of the stick, just deep enough to cut into the cages. This is quickly done with a carpenter's plow, and the groove is afterward made beveling so as to hold the sliding strip, by running the strips, while held at an angle, over a buzz saw. Now saw some long thin strips of well seasoned pine, to just slide closely into these grooves, and when the cages are cut up we shall have a sliding door in each; but we are not yet ready to cut them up. CANDY FOB BEES AND QUEENS AND———LITTLE FOLKS. Get a tin saucepan, and put into it some coffee sugar with a little water—a very little water will do. Make it boil and stir it, and when it is done enough to "grain" when CAGES FOE QUEENS. 39 CAGES FOR QUEENS. stirred in a saucer, take it quickly from the stove. While it is u cooking," do not let the fire touch the pan, but place the pan on the stove, and there will be no danger of its burning. Cover the dining table with some newspapers that you may have no troublesome daubs to clear up, and place your long sticks of cages upon it. Lay one in front of you, with the back edge where the slide is, slightly raised. Now stir your syrup in the saucepan, until it will be just right to pour into tins for " sugar cakes," and you are ready to ladle it into the queen cages with a spoon. Fill them about as full as our artist has shown in the cut below, as at A. MANNER OF PUTTING THE CANDY IN THE QUEEN CAGE. Go on to the next, and work as fast as you can, but be sure you do not get any hot candy on the wood except in the cages, and do not get any on your fingers. Our boy who does the work thinks you will remember after you have tried it about once. If your candy was right, it will be dry and hard on the outside when cold, but comparatively moist on the inside, and if you try to get it out of a cage, you will be satisfied that it will never get loose and u bump " the bees. To see when it is just right you can try dropping some on a saucer, and while you are at work, be sure to remember the little folks who will doubtless take quite an interest in the proceedings, especially the baby. You can stir some until it is very white indeed for her; this will do very well for cream candy. We have formerly made our bee candy hard and clear, but in this shape it is very apt to be sticky, unless we endanger having it burned, whereas if it is stirred we can have dry hard candy, of what would be only wax if cooled suddenly without the stirring. Besides we have much more moisture in the stirred sugar candy, and we want all the moisture we can possibly have, consistent with ease in handling. If you have not wire cloth doors and windows to keep out the flies, you will have to bundle up your sticks of cages as soon as you get the candy in them, or the flies will soon make them—unpresentable. After the candy is all in, dress both edges of your strips nicely, put them side by side, screw them in the iron clamp shown in SECTION BOXES, and saw them up into square blocks. Boys of 10 years old, will cut and nail on the tinned wire cloth with tinned tacks, and sandpaper the rough edges as well as anybody else. If the wire cloth has the rough edge folded under, on each of the four sides, the cages will not be catching on clothing, etc., as they do when the rough ends are left exposed. If you make the boys do their work well, your cages should look about like this: QUEEN CAGE COMPLETE. A little more than a year has passed. Queens have been sent all over the U. S., to Colorado, Oregon, California, Texas, &c.; and we have generally succeeded while the candy was just freshly made, but have had many failures, in the case of long distances, where the candy had become dry and hard. As it is quite inconvenient to make the cages every day, just as we want to ship the queens, a little 2 dram vial filled with water, has been added to the cage. A little notch is cut in one side of the cork, just large enough to let the bees get their tongues in; if it is too large, the water will be shaken out by transportation. The vial is put into the cage through the opening under the slide, and is held in place by a hole bored through into the opposite side, as shown in the cut on next page. By keeping the vials supplied with water, we have kept queens in perfect health, more than 6 weeks, in these bottle cages, A dozen bees and queen will consume about a dram of water per week. As delays can not always be avoided, and the price of a single queen will pay for a dozen cages, w& CAGES FOB QUEENS. 40 have adopted a cage made on the plan given, but considerably larger. The size we now use, is made of H inch lumber, 21 inches wide, with a 2i inch hole bored for the cage. For holding the vial of water in place, a hole is bored with a I bit, in the direction in which the vial lies. The bottom of the vial sits securely in the hole, and the top has a rather long cork, that is held firmly in place by the sliding door, when the cage is closed. For very long distances, CANDIED HONEY. THE BOTTLE QUEEN CAGE. such as California, Texas, &c., we put two cages together so that the vials lie in opposite ways; that is, so that the water is over the orifice of one or the other of the vials, no matter what the position of the cages may be. In warm weather, it is not necessary to use more than from 12 to 20 bees to keep the queen company, but for cool weather and for long distances, I would use 30 or 40, or with a double cage, perhaps, even more. HOW TO CAGE THE BEES AND QUEEN. Open your hive without smoke if you can; if you cannot, use as little smoke as possible. "When the bees have become quiet, lift out the frames until you find the one containing the queen, and stand it in the hive in the position shown in the diagram. Set the frame so that the queen is on the part projecting out of the hive. Open the cage just as you see it in the engraving, and hold it in your left hand, while your thumb covers the entrance. Now pick the queen up by both wings, or by her shoulders, while you put her into the cage. Put your thumb over the entrance at once, or she will crawl out in a twinkling. Now we want none but young bees to put with her, so we will look on the frame, for those that are dipping their noses into the unsealed honey. As their bodies are. bent, we have an excellent opportunity to pick them up by the wings, and with a little practice you should be able to put them in the cage about as fast as you would grains of corn. Young bees will never sting your thumb, unless they happen to be very bad hybrids, but old ones will sometimes venture to do so, if you happen to handle them too roughly. CANDIED HOOTBir. All honey, as a general thing, candies at the approach of cold weather. It has been suggested that thin honey candies quicker than thick, and such may be the case; for honey that has been perfectly ripened in the hive, that is, has been allowed to remain in the hive several weeks after being sealed over, will sometimes not candy at all, even if exposed to zero temperature. As some honey candies at the very first approach of cold weather, and other samples not until we have severe freezing weather, we can not always be sure that perfect ripening will prove a preventive. It is very seldom indeed that we find sealed comb honey in a candied state, and we therefore infer that the bees know how they can preserve it best for their use; for although they can use candied honey when obliged to do so, it is very certain that they dislike to bother with it, for they often carry it out to the entrance of their hives when new honey is coming in, rather than take the trouble of bringing water with which to dissolve it. HOW TO PREVENT HONEY FROM CANDYING. By following out the plan of the bees, we can keep honey in a clear, limpid, liquid state, the year round. The readiest means of doing this, is to seal it up in ordinary self-sealing fruit jars, precisely as we do fruit. Maple molasses, syrups, and preserves of all kinds, may be kept in the same way if we do our work well, almost as fresh, and with the same flavor, as the day they were put up. We should fill the jar full, and have the contents nearly boiling hot when the cover is screwed on. The bees understood this idea perfectly, before fruit jars were ever invented, for they put their fresh pollen in the cells, cover it perfectly CANDY FOR BEES. 41 CANDY FOE BEES. with honey, and then seal it up with an air tight wax cover. To avoid heating the honey too hot, it may be best to set the fruit jars in a pan of boiling water, raising them up a little from the bottom, by a thin board. If the honey is over-heated, just the least trifle, it injures its transparency, and also injures its color; in fact it seems almost impossible to heat some kinds of honey at all, without giving it a darker shade. CANDIED HONEY CONFECTIONERY. If you allow a barrel of linden or clover honey to become candied solid, and then scoop out the centre after one of the heads is removed, you will find, after several weeks, that the honey ntound the sides has drained much after the manner of loaf sugar, leaving the solid portion, sometimes, nearly as white as snow, and so dry that it may be done up in a paper like sugar. If you now take this dry candied honey and warm it in an oven until it is soft, it can be worked like " taffy," and in this state you will pronounce it, perhaps, the most delicious confectionery you ever tasted. You can also make candy of honey by boiling, the same as molasses, but as it is little if any better, and much more expensive, it is seldom used. See EXTRACTED HONEY. CAXntir FOB. BBSS. Very little is to be added to the directions just given for making candy for the queen cages, except that we are to work with larger quantities. If your candy is burned, no amount of boiling will make it hard, and your best way is to use it for cooking, or feeding the bees in summer weather. Burned sugar is death to them, if fed in cold weather. You can tell when it is burned, by the smell, color, and taste. If you do not boil it enough, it will be soft and sticky in warm weather, and will be liable to drip when stored away. Perhaps you had better try a pound or two at first, while you u get your hand in." Our first experiment was with 50 Ibs.; it all got 44scorched"14some how." As the most convenient way of feeding candy that will probably be devised is to put it into your regular brood frames, I shall give directions for making it in that form. If you do not like it so, you can break it out, or cut it in smaller pieces with a knife, when nearly cold. Lay your frame on a level table, or flat board; perhaps you had better use the flat board, for you need some nails or wires driven into it, to hold your frame down close, that the candy may not run out under it. Before you fasten the frame down, you will need to put a sheet of thin paper on your board, to prevent the candy's sticking. Fix the board exactly level, and you are all ready to make your candy. If you have many stocks that need feeding, you can get along faster, by having several boards with frames fastened on them. You will need some sort of a sauce-pan (any kind of a tin pan with a handle attached will do) that will hold about 10 Ibs. of sugar. Put in a little water —no vinegar, cream of tartar or any thing of the sort is needed, whatever others may tell you—and boil it until it is ready to sugar off. You can determine when this point is reached, by stirring some in a saucer, or you can learn to test it as confectioners do, by dipping your finger in a cup of cold water, then in the kettle of candy and back into the water again. When it breaks like egg shells from the end of your finger, the candy is just right. Take it off the stove at once, and as soon as it begins to harden around the sides, give it a good stirring, and keep it up until it gets so thick that you can just pour it. Pour it into your frame, and get in just as much as you can without running it over. If it is done nicely, the slabs should look like marble when cold, and should be almost as clean and dry to handle. If you omit the stirring, your candy will be clear like glass, but it will be sticky to handle and will be very apt to drip. The stirring causes all the water to be taken up in the crystali-zation or graining process, and will make hard dry sugar, of what would have otherwise been damp or waxy candy. If you wish to see how nicely it works for feeding bees, just hang out a slab and let the bees try it. They will carry it all away as peaceably as they would so much meal in the spring. You can feed bees with this any day in the winter, by hanging a frame of it close up to the cluster of bees. If you put it into the hive in very cold weather, it would be well to keep it in a warm room, until well warmed through. Now remove one of the outside combs containing no bees, if you can find such a one, spread the cluster, and hang the frame in the centre. Cover the bees at the sides and above, with cushions, and they will be all safe. If a colony needs only a little food, you can let them lick off what they like, and set the rest away until another time, or until another season. WHAT KIND OF SUGAR TO USE FOR MAKING CANDY. We have generally used the coffee A, but any of the sugars that are used for feeding CANDY FOE BEES. 42 will answer, if we except the new grape or corn sugar. The bees seem to be quite loth to use this in any other form than syrup, and we hardly know why. Common brown and maple sugars work nicely, although it is plain to be seen that the bees prefer the better article; for this reason, we have used the latter. Coffee A sugar now costs us lOc. by the barrel, and retails for lie. As we have to pay a confectioner 2c. for making, the candy cannot well be sold at retail for less than 15c. As much as i part of wheat flour can be added to the sugar and it will be nearly as white and hard, but the labor of making is very much more, for it must be boiled very slowly, and stirred to prevent burning. The bees seem to prefer that containing the flour, and it has the effect of hastening brood-rearing, like pollen. After it is stored in combs, it looks like honey except for a slightly milky or turbid appearance, but has a very perceptible flour taste. If rye flour and grape sugar could be combined so as to make a dry clean candy or even cake that would be readily taken by the bees, it seems as if it would be the bee-keeper's desideratum, so far as cheapness is concerned; but although the bees take both readily when separate, we have not as yet succeeded in producing a " staff of life" for the little fellows that will not cost to exceed 5c. per Ib. CAUTION IN REGARD TO CANDY MAKING. Before you commence, make up your mind you will not get one drop of sugar or syrup on the floor or table. Keep your hands clean, and every thing else clean, and let the women folks see that men have common sense; some of them at least. If you should forget yourself, and let the candy boil over on the stove, it would be very apt to get on the floor, and then you would be very likely to get" your foot in it," and before you got through, you might wish you had never heard of bees or candy either; and your wife, if she did not say so, might wish she had never heard of anything that brought a man into the kitchen. I have had a little experience in the line of feet sticking to the floor and snapping at every step you take, and with door knobs sticking to the fingers when touched, but it was in the honey house. We have a 50 cent stove—came from the tinsmith's old iron heap—that has been made to look quite respectable, and proves very handy for melting candied honey, making candy, warming syrup in cold weather, &c., and if you keep a wash basin and towel near by, and keep the honey house neat and CATJSTIP. clean, it is a real pleasure to do all this work. CATNIP. (Nepata Cataria). This is a near relative of GILL-OVER-THE-GROUND, which see. Quinby' has said that if he were to grow any plant exclusively for the honey it produced, that plant would be Catnip ; and very likely he was not far from right. But as we have never yet had any definite report from a sufficient field of it to test it alone, either in quality or quantity of the honey, we remain almost as much in the dark in regard to it as we were at the time he made the statement, several years ago. Several have cultivated it in small patches, and have reported that in a state of cultivation it apparently yielded more honey than in its wild state, for bees are found on it almost constantly, for several months in the year; yet no one, I believe, is prepared to say positively that it would pay to cultivate it for this purpose. Seeds have been advertised and sold through our Journals for several years, but, as many complaints have been made that they did not grow, and as we have entirely failed in getting several different samples to germinate, we are a little doubtful about the feasibility of sending out seed. The only person who has raised cultivated plants from the seed, that we remember of, is M. Kevins, Cheviot, O., and he advises sowing it in Jan., Feb., and March. It is very likely that this, like many of the seeds of forest trees, requires the agency of the frost, to make it germinate. Such would seem to be the case from the reports of several, to the effect that they had caused it to grow in fence corners, brush heaps, and many waste places, by simply sprinkling the seed on the ground as they passed along. Mr. Kevins, and J. Wolfen-den of Adams, Wis., both speak of the honey as being equal in quality to either White clover'or Basswood. Since the above was written, we have had several reports from those who have raised the plants in great profusion; and as one of the parties said the seed came up very thickly on the plat of ground where he winnowed the seed, we are inclined to think the trouble has been in saving the seed, or in sowing it. It seems that the seed should be gathered about as soon as it is fully ripe, and if the weather is favorable, it may be sowed immediately. Samples of seed gathered as above, have germinated without any trouble. The plant does not usually blossom until the second year, but if sowed very early, on fine soil, it may make quite a bloom the first season. OLOVEB. CXDX3R AWB CIDER AXIXiXiS. Xot oftly are many of our bees drowned in the cider, in the vicinity of cider mills, but the cider, if gathered late in the season, is quite apt to prove very unwholesome as a diet for our little friends. Probably much of the dysentery that causes such havoc is the result of this unsealed cider stored in the cells when winter comes on. If the colony is very strong, and well supplied with winter stores, the cider may do but little harm; but where they are weak and obliged to use the cider largely, they sometimes die even in the fall. We at one time fed a colony about a gallon of sweet cider, and they were dead before Christmas. At another time a barrel of sweet cider was found to be leaking, but as the bees took it up greedily as fast as it ran out, their owner kindly allowed them to work away. They all died quite promptly, after the experiment. The bees of a large apiary will take sweet cider from the mill, nearly as fast as it can be made, and we at one time had quite a serious time with the owner of such a mill, because the Italians insisted on " going shares," whenever he made sweet cider. After paying quite a little sum in the way of damages, and losing our bees every season there was a large apple crop, besides buying sugar in the vain attempt to call them away by counter inducements, we, at the suggestion of one of the other sex, hung white cloth curtains over all the openings to the mill. Some strips of pine, $2.50 worth of sheeting 2| yards wide, and a couple of hours time, fixed the mill so that scarcely a bee was to be seen inside. In a very short time they gave up flying around the mill, and apparently forgot all about it. CLOVER (Trifolium). The most important of the Clovers, common White Clover (Trifolium Eepens], which everybody knows, is perhaps at the head of the entire list of honey producing plants. We could better spare any of the rest, and I might almost say all the rest, than our White Clover that grows so plentifully as to be almost unnoticed, almost everywhere. But little effort has been made to raise it from the seed, because of the difficulty of collecting and saving it. There is a large variety known as White Dutch Clover, that is sold by our seedsmen, to some extent. I have not been able to gather whether it is superior to the common. The common Ked Clover— T. pratense— yields honey largely some seasons, but not as generally as does the white, nor do the 4S COMB BASKET. bees work on it for as long a period. While working on Red Clover, the bees bring in small loads of a peculiar dark green pollen, and by observing this, we can usually tell when they are bringing in Red Clover honey. The Italians will often do finely on Red Clover, while the common black bees will not even so much as notice it. The general cultivation is much like that of AL-SIKE CLOVER, which see; but the safest way for a beginner is to consult some good farmer in his own neighborhood, as different localities require slightly different treatment. The same will apply to saving the seed, which can hardly be saved profitably, without the use of a clover huller, made especially for the purpose. While most persons seem to tire, in time, of almost any one kind of honey, that from Clover seems to u wear" like bread, butter and potatoes; for it is the great staple in the markets, and wrhere one can recommend his honey as being pure White Clover, he has said about all he can for it. There are quite a number of other clovers such as Lucerne, white and yellow Trefoil, Alfalfa, Esparcette &c., but none have been sufficiently tested to warrant recommending them much. Strong statements are made in regard to the value of white and yellow Sweet Clovers, and the former under the name of Melilotus Leucantha was quite extensively sold some years ago. From the fact that those who invested in it gradually dropped it, I would not advise investing much money in it to commence with. Sweet Clover, (Melilotus alba or Melilot), has some valuable traits, as standing frost, and drouth, but many times and seasons, the bees will hardly notice it at all. The statement has been made that an acre will support 20 colonies of bees, and afford from 500 to 1000 Ibs of honey. Such statements are usually made by those offering the seeds for sale, and although they niay be honestly given, I think they should be received with due allowance; about 4 Ibs of seed are needed for an acre, sow like alsike. It will grow on almost any barren hillside, but it is a bad weed to exterminate; if however, it is mown down to prevent seeding, the roots will soon die out. COMB BASKET. When the bees are gathering no honey, especially during the lull that usually intervenes between spring and fall pasturage, it is many times quite difficult to remove combs of brood, or open hives at all, without getting robbers at work. Any one who has had quite a time with rob- COMB FOUNDATION. 44 COMB FOUNDATION. bing bees will remember for some days, that it makes trouble to leave a comb outside the hive while we are handling others inside. Bobbing bees will get at them, and soon they will learn to follow us about, and finally "dive" right into the unsealed honey the minute a comb is exposed. Suppose we do not have robbers; still, when we take a frame out of a hive, it is very convenient to have some place where we can set it down safely, while we look at the rest. If we stand them up against the hive, or one of the posts of the grape vine trellis, unless we are very careful, bees are killed, and if the day is a windy one, the comb is quite apt to be blown down in the dirt. To avoid all these mishaps, we have sometimes carried about an empty hive, but this is unwieldy, and does not keep away robbers either, unless a cover is carried with it. Comb baskets have been made of wood, but these are unsightly unless kept painted, and if any honey drips from the combs, it soaks into the wood in a way that is far from being tidy. The one shown in the engraving is made of light tin, and I believe meets all requirements. It can be readily carried from hive to hive, and the light cover is very quickly closed bee-tight, whenever occasion may require. furnish the bees with the wax they need without being obliged to secrete it by the consumption of honey. It is so simple a matter to make a practical test of it by hanging a piece in a hive when honey is coming in, that I think I may be excused from describing the way in which the bees use it, at any great length. Neither will it be needful to dwell on the successive steps by which it was discovered, and brought to its present state of perfection. The first mention we have of wax foundations that were accepted by the bees, was published in the German Bee-Journal as far back as 1857. Mr. J. Mehring, of Frankinthal, Germany, if I am correct, seems to have been the original inventor. For nearly 20 years, the matter seems to have slumbered, although COMB BASKET. Where extracting is done indoors, the basket can be used to very good advantage, for five heavy combs are about as many as one cares to carry at once. The combs should hang on metal rabbets the same as they do in the hive, to avoid crushing bees when they are set in hastily. Your tin-smith should be able to make you one like the above, for about $1.50. COftUI rOUETDATION. Since the introduction of this fdn., within the past few years, many difficult points have been solved completely; such as. how to insure straight combs, how to insure all worker comb or all drone comb, as the case may be, and how to FOUNDATION MACHINE WITH 12 INCH ROLLS. different ones at different times, among whom was our friend Wagner, took it up, made some improvements, and dropped it again. The sheets made in both England and Germany, had no side walls, but simply indentations. Mr. Wagner added shallow side walls, making it much more like natural comb. Until recently, it was all made with a pair of plates, but it did not require much wisdom to decide that such an article, if wanted in large quantities, should be rolled out by machinery. In the latter part of COMB FOUNDATION. 45 COMB FOUNDATION 1875,1 talked with a friend, who is quite an artist in the way of fine mechanical work and machinery, and told him what I thought was wanted. The result was that he made a machine for me, of which I submit the engraving (p. 44), that would roll out a con-tinous sheet, with very fair side walls of wax, and perhaps superior to any thing before made. Since then he has made machines for many parties in our own country, and they have also been sent to both England and Scotland. Mr. A. Wash-burn, of Medina, O., is the inventor and manufacturer of these machines. Many tons of wax have been worked up during the present year—1877—and the demand is increasing so steadily, that it is quite probable the supply of wax will be the only limit to its manufacture and use. Many experiments have been made with a view of substituting something in place of real bees-wax, such as paraffme, ceresin, and the like, but all, so far, have resulted in failure. Paraffine will make beautiful fdn., and the bees will accept it at once, but as soon as we have wrarm summer weather, the beautiful comb, honey and all, will fall down in a shapeless mass in the bottom of the hive. HOW TO MAKE THE WAX SHEETS. This is done by dipping a sheet of galvanized iron in a tall vessel of melted wax. The wax must be neither too hot nor too j cold, and the dipping plate must be kept | cold, by immersing it in cold water, before each sheet is dipped. The dipping plate is about the thickness of a silver dime, and a handle of wood is fixed to its upper edge. When the plate is iirst used, you will probably have to rub it lightly with soap and wrater, to make the wax come off readily, and you will need to use a little soap at the upper edge, all the time, to get the sheet started. As soap seems disagreeable to the bees, we now dispense with its use entirely, using instead, a bark to be had of the druggists, called soap bark. This bark is simply broken into bits, and thrown into a little water, until the water becomes sufficiently soapy. This leaves no trace on the wrax sheets in the way of either taste or smell. Brush the water over the plate well, to make it adhere, soap the upper edges, as directed, and you are ready to plunge it into the melted wax. When it touches bottom, lift it out immediately, and hold it above the melted wax until you see by its looks, that the wax has cooled enough to allow it to be dipped again. We usually dip twice; but if the j wax is pretty warm, you may have to dip three times. After the last dipping, as soon as it has ceased to drip, dip it all over in the tub or tank of cold water. Take it out and commence to strip off the sheets. If too hot, the wax will break, and if too cold, it will stick; in the latter case you must scrape the wax off with a knife, and try again. After a little practice, you will make it go as fast as the sheets can be handled. Two men and a boy are needed to work rapidly. One dips, another takes off the sheets, and the boy brushes and wipes the dipping plates. Now your tub of water will very soon get warm, and as this will not do at all, ice must be constantly added. If much work is to be done, a tank made of boards is best, with an apartment for a block of ice in one end. Besides, the wrax will be rapidly cooled, and at the same time lowered; to keep up the supply, we have a boiler on the stove, with I a honey gate attached. This boiler is made | large enough to take in the ordinary cakes ' of wax of commerce, and should be made deep so as to set down into the stove for the purpose of getting the advantage of rapid FOUNDATION MACHINE WITH 5 INCH ROLLS. heating, and to allow all impurities to settle. Besides this, the boiler must be made double, and the outer space filled with water, for if wax is burned in the least, it is utterly spoiled for comb making. That we may get only the pure wax, the gate is put in near the top of the boiler, to allow all the impurities to settle to the bottom, and it lias a sheet of tine wire cloth put in so as to strain the melted wax before it passes through it. Wax sheeted in this way, is of a light beautiful yellow, and the fdn. is fit for use in the surplus boxes, without any sort of bleaching. COMB FOUNDATION. 46 COMB FOUNDATION. When you start up, your dipping boiler must be full of melted wax, and we have this also made double, with hot water all round it, that we may set it in the stove in place of the other when starting. With the above arrangement and number of hands, 400 Ibs. can easily be dipped in a day. It will require considerable fuel, and perhaps 200 Ibs. of ice, for the day's work. When working rapidly, the water is apt to boil over on the stove; on this account, a broad flaring lip of tin should be soldered to the top edge, and the inner boiler that holds the wax should be carried up pretty high. Separate lots of wax cannot well be worked alone, unless of 100 Ibs or more; as the above process will make bright wax out of the worst looking, it can hardly be thought desirable, to work lots separately. ROLLING THE WAX SHEETS. The machine shown (p. 43) is one of the small sized ones for rolling sheets only 5 inches wide. We at first covered the rolls with a lather made of soap and water, to prevent the wax sticking; but, for the reason mentioned, slippery elm was substituted for the soap, and afterward it was found that starch, prepared just as the women use it, was just as good as anything. When the rolls are new, the wax will sometimes bother a great deal; but if the particles are carefully picked out with a quill tooth pick—any thing harder might injure the rolls—and the rolls, as well as the sheet of wax, are kept well covered with the starch, it will soon come out nicely. As soon as the edge gets through, it is to be picked up with the fingers, then held between two pieces of wood, and drawn out as fast as the rolls are turned. Two men, after a little practice, will roll it, with a 12 inch machine, about as fast as it can be dipped. The sheets roll with less trouble from sticking, if allowed to stand a couple of days after being dipped, as the wax hardens slightly by being exposed to the air. This explains why bleached wax is harder than the common yellow. On this account, the bees work the bleached wax so much slower, that I would not advise its use, even for box honey. TRIMMING, SQUARING, AND CUTTING THE SHEETS. As the sheets are taken from the rolls, lay them squarely upon each other, until you have a pile 2 or 3 inches high. Now lay on them a board cut the exact size you wish the fdn. to be, and with a sharp, thin bladed, butcher, or other knife, cut through the whole, all around the board. To prevent the knife from sticking, dip it occasionally in the starch, such as is used in rolling the sheets. To have the knife work nicely, you should have a coarse whet-stone near by, with which to keep the edge keen. As the board is liable to shrink, warp, and get the edges whittled off, where a great number of sheets of a particular size is wanted, we have frames, made sharp on their edges and lined with tin. The tin is folded, and put on so that the edge of the knife does not strike it, if the blade is held in the proper position. To cut sheets 12 by 18, we have a frame made as follows: FRAMES FOR CUTTING SHEETS FOR BROOD FRAMES. The diagonal piece in figure 1 serves as a brace to keep it true and square, and also for a handle to lift it by. The frame is placed over the sheet so as to cut to the best advantage, and the knife is run around it. Figure 1 is for cutting sheets 12 by 18, and figure 2 for the L. frame, 8 by 16i inches. For cutting a great number of small pieces, such as starters for sections, a pair of frames like those shown in the engravings below are very convenient. Fig. 1. Fig. 2. MACHINE FOR CUTTING STARTERS FOR SECTION BOXES. Fig. 1 is composed of seven, i inch strips, COMB FOUNDATION. 47 COMB FOUNDATION. If inches wide, by about 20 inches long. The spaces are just wide enough to allow the knife to run between them. Fig. 2 is composed of the same number of boards, but they are 3f wide, by about 16 long. You will observe that this allows one frame to be placed over the other, each fitting in between the cleats of the other. To use the machine, place a sheet (or sheets) of fdn., say 12 by 18, on Fig. 1, and lay Fig. 2 over it. Run the knife through all the spaces, and then turn the whole machine over. Now run it through as before, and your sheet is cut into oblong pieces, just such as we put in the 4i section boxes when we ship them in complete hives. We should perhaps use pieces somewhat larger, were it not that there would be greater danger of their breaking out with the rough handling they get when the hives are sent by freight. The pieces, as nr.ide with the above frames, are If by 3| inches. If much work is to be done with these frames, they had better be covered with tin, like the frames before mentioned. CARLIN'S FOUNDATION CUTTER. This implement was invented by C. E. Carlin, of Shreveport, La., and is intended to take the place of a knife. It is cheaply made, with a wheel of tin, but better ones have a steel wheel. After using it one season, we find that the greater part of our hands prefer a knife. At the present writing—Sept., 1878—our Bee Journals are full of enthusiastic reports concerning the ufdn." (I have abbreviated it to avoid the necessity of spelling out "comb foundation" every time it is mentioned), and although there are a few minor points that yet remain to be remedied, the testimony in its favor, both for brood combs and for starters in section boxes, is overwhelming. The trouble with it for brood combs is the tendency of the sheets to stretch, when made of soft specimens of wax ; but this is so trifling, where the sheets are made of pure firm wax, that it hardly needs to be noticed. The only trouble with it for comb honey is that, under some circumstances occurring very rarely I believe, the bees will build on to the fdn., without thinning the centre at all, as they usually do. I believe this is more apt to occur, when a good yield of honey comes during rather cool weather, the bees being unable to get the wax warm enough to work readily. The remedy for this will be in making the base of the cells of the fdn. exceedingly thin, and the small 5 inch machines seem best for this purpose. We have made machines for making the fdn. four, four and a half, and five cells to the inch. The latter is now agreed by all, I believe, to be best for the brood apartment, the others being used for comb honey. As the queen is not much disposed to lay eggs in the fdn. 4£ cells to the inch, it may serve an excellent purpose; but as the bees can work the fdn. with 4 cells to the inch (drone comb) faster than any other during a yield of honey, this size will perhaps be used. SAGGING OF THE FOUNDATION. At the time of this writing (Dec. 10, 1878), many devices are being tried to prevent the sagging of the fdn., and consequently slight elongation of the cells, in the upper part of the comb. With the L. frames, this is so slight, that it occasions no serious trouble with the greater part of the wax of commerce, but with deeper frames, or with some specimens of natural wax, the sagging is sufficient to allow the bees to raise drones in the upper cells. I have used the combs with wires rolled in the fdn., and also with wires worked in, on the plan given on page 294, Sept. GLEANINGS, 1878, but while the latter proved much the more successful, when the brood was capped, I found many vacant cells right over the wires. Aside from the production of drone cells, we want combs that will not break out of the frames in shipping, handling, or extracting, and I am much inclined to think a thin wood base can be made to answer; fdn. made in this way will be even cheaper than pure wax. To have it firm and solid in the frames, as well as exactly in the centre, we groove both end bars just as we do the top bar for the comb guide. This will insure perfect cells, clear up to the frame on all sides, and the comb is very much stronger than any natural comb, or even a comb with wires in at every inch. We have to-day (July 5,1879), combs built on i inch pine boards, more beautiful I think than any thing I ever saw before in the shape of a honey comb, and I am daily expecting the queen to occupy it. July 9re all cast steel, our machine should almost run of itself, EXTRACTOR, if everything is made just right. The steel pivot at the bottom is soldered in the end of our tin tube, by rolling some thin tin around it until it will drive in tight. You should never attempt to use an extractor, and I might almost say any piece of machinery, until you have it securely screwed down to the box or platform on which it is to stand. The screw holes are made in the bottom ring just above the heavy wire that rests on the floor. The screws are put in a little slanting. It should also be at a convenient height for easy work. The machine could be made heavy enough to stand still from its own weight, it is true, and it might be made perched on legs, also, to save the trouble of building a box or platform on which to stand it, and if you are making them for home use, it may be well to do so; but if making them to ship to customers, I would never think of sending them anything that they could procure at home, thus saving heavy shipping expenses. I would say the same in regard to making cans large enough to hold 100 Ibs., or more, of honey, below the revolving frame. When the extractor is being used, the honey gate is supposed to be open, and utensils can always be supplied to hold the honey, much cheaper than to have the extractor thus enlarged. Those I have described, can be very conveniently worked over the bung of a barrel, or you can have a tin can made on purpose to set under the honey gate. The gearing for the extractor, including a tinned honey gate, will cost about $2.00; the materials and labor for the inside should not cost to exceed $2.50; seven sheets of tin for the can, would be 70c; a half day's work in the making, $1. 25; hoop for the top, 50c; and perhaps the solder and other items, 25c; this would bring the whole cost up to $7.20. Your own time in "bossing" the tinner, and the liabilities of making mistakes, and doing a bad job on the first one, would probably bring the expense up to about the usual selling price, viz., from $7.50 to $9,00. Machines for different sized frames are made much in the same way; for the American and Gallup frames; we can make a short can, only the height of the width of a sheet of tin, instead of the length. Of course these can be made at a less cost. Where the frames hang in the extractor the same wray that they do in the hive, no wire cloth support is needed across the bottom of the comb basket, unless it is preferred for extracting small pieces or bits of comb. 72 EXTRACTOR. j^o cover is ever needed over the extractor while at work, for it would be greatly in the way; but after we are through, or only stop temporarily, the machine should be covered to keep out dust and insects. The most convenient thing for this purpose is a circular piece of cheap cloth, with a rubber cord run in the hem. This can be thrown over in an instant and all is secure. When honey is coming in abundantly, it may be safe to carry the machine, located on a suitable platform, around to the hives, especially if the apiary is much scattered about. But if the bees are disposed to rob, all such attempts will come to " grief" very quickly. EXTRACTING FROM BROKEN PIECES OF COMB OR FROM SECTION BOXES. As we always use the L. extractor, we have extracted from pieces of comb, by setting them up on the wire cloth at the bottom. The smaller, shallow extractors, for Gallup, Adair, and American frames, have no such attachment; therefore some arrangement is really needed for the purpose. At the same time, it would be very handy for the tall extractors, when any mishap occurs to break a comb down, or when we wish to extract from heavy pieces of comb, in warm weather. Several devices have been described in the journals, but none of them suit me so well as the one figured below, which was sent me by J. D. Slack, of Plaquemine, La. He uses it for extracting from section boxes also, but I think I should prefer to do this in the broad frames that hold them, thus doing a full set of eight at one time. With this machine, only one could be extracted at once. EXTRACTOR FOR PIECES OF COMB. At C are a pair of hinges, that the machine may be opened the more readily to receive a heavy, soft comb. The wires, B, are of one piece, and are also made to turn that they may be hooked into A, when the comb is properly in place. The hooks, A, are to hook over the top bar of the inside of the revolving frame of the extractor. F. FEEDING AND FEEDERS. As a general rule, I would not advise beginners to take away and sell their honey, with the idea of feeding their stocks up in the fall with some substitute for honey; and if a person is inclined to be careless and neglectful they had better never think of feeding at all. Leave the 10 combs in the lower story untouched by the extractor, and you will very seldom have reason to feed. If you use section boxes in the lower story, you had better take them all out in time to let the bees fill combs for winter stores, in their place, unless you have very heavy surplus combs laid away, that will contain on an average 5 Ibs. of sealed honey each; in this case, give them 6 of these combs and a chaif cushion division board on each side of them in place of the sections, and you have them then in the safest shape for winter, you possibly can, providing they are in a chaff hive (according to my ideas of wintering). iNowif we were only sure of having the wfell filled surplus combs, we might skip "feeding" entirely, but alas, there will come seasons and circumstances when we must feed. I have never known a season when a colony of Italians with a good queen would not get an ample supply for winter, and furnish some surplus; but I am told there are such occasionally, and the present one (1877) is said to have left many in a starving condition in California, right in mid-summer. Again, where one raises bees and queens for sale, they may divide and sub-divide to such an extefft as to have many colonies with bees enough, but with too little food. The only remedy in these cases is to feed. WHAT TO FEED. If I had sealed honey in the combs, I should use it for giving the requisite stores in preference to sugar, unless I could sell it for more, pound for pound, than the sugar could be purchased for. If the honey is late fall honey, such as buckwheat, golden rod, autumn wild flowers, etc., I should consider it just as safe as any other if well seasoned and ripened, unless I had by actual experiment good reason to think otherwise; in such a case I would feed sugar. Quite a number of reports have been given that seemed to show bees wintered safely on the spring honey, or that gathered in the early part of the season, when others in the same apiary where all this spring honey was extracted, and they were confined to the autumn stores for winter, were badly diseased. Whether a chaff packing around them would enable them to use such honey with safety or not, remains to be shown; but I have much faith that it would, for all the bad honey I have ever experimented with, could be used with perfect safety in warm weather. Well, supposing we have not the honey in frames, what then V If we have extracted honey two questions come up; which is better? sugar syrup, or honey V and which will cost the most ? I would unhesitatingly take syrup made from A sugar, in place of the best clover or any other kind of honey, if offered at the same price. I say this after having fed many barrels of sugar, and after having carefully noted the results of feeding both sugar and honey. In regard to expense: a gallon of water to 20 Ibs. of sugar will make 28 Ibs. of nice thick syrup, and as the sugar is now worth about 11 cents by the barrel, our syrup will cost us about 8 cents per Ib. I think, if my extracted honey were all ready to ship, and I could get 10 cents cash for it, I would sell it and buy the sugar. Perhaps a safe rule will be to say that whenever we can trade a pound of honey for a pound of sugar, we had better do so, for the difference in favor of sugar will certainly pay for all the trouble of making it into syrup. In regard to the cheaper grades of sugar than the standard A, I will say that I have used the C sugar, without being able to detect any difference in the results; but as the FEEDING AND FEEDERS. 74 FEEDING AND FEEDEES. price is but very little different, I rather decided in my own mind, without any definite proof, that the A contained about the same amount of pure sugar, for the money, as did any of the cheaper grades. I also fed a few colonies for winter on the cheapest brown sugar, and somewhat contrary to my expectations, they wintered equally well. I have not used brown sugar extensively, because in my experiments with candy for feeding, I discovered that burnt candy or sugar—-caramel—was certain poison to bees when confined to such stores in cold weather. See CAHBY. As brown sugar frequently owes its color and taste to this same caramel, I have been a little afraid of it for winter stores, although it may transpire by actual test, that the amount is too small to be of any injury. I have never given grape sugar a trial, but as it is said to be offered as low as 3| cents, I shall take steps to do so at once, and will report. HOW TO FEED, Although the number of feeders described, invented, patented, and offered for sale are almost without number, I would pass them all without notice (and I have pretty thoroughly tried nearly all of them), except the simple atmospheric or " pepper box feeder," that has been so often described. A pepper box explains the whole principle if you fill it with water and invert it, and in fact you may use the cheap tin pepper boxes for feeders if you have but few colonies. Fill one with honey or syrup, place it in front of the hive at nightfall, and you will find it all taken into the hive by morning, without a single bee or any part of the hive having become daubed or sticky; those who have fussed with feeders know how untidy and disagreeable everything soon gets, unless great care is taken. I would feed outside the hive, because I think the bees behave more naturally when the food comes in this*way, and because, by so doing, the labor of opening and closing the hives and disturbing things inside for the accommodation of a feeder is avoided; also, if we feed during the day time, the bees all stay at home, and the honey that might otherwise have been gathered is lost. I have several times fed stocks during the fall to build them up, and although they were induced to take many pounds of honey or syrup, they would be in no better condition than others that had not been fed at all, for they "loafed" and fussed with their feeder, while the rest were doing very fair day's works. Again, I once gave a partic- ular colony all the cappings during extracting time; the honey they got out of them amounted to 3 or 4 Ibs. per day, but this was only about half as much as we were before getting from them, and we soon became satisfied that the honey in the cappings was even worse than thrown away, for it had induced the bees to stay at home, when they would otherwise have gathered a much larger quantity from th6 fields. This result has followed feeding so many times, that we are loth to resort to it, when it can be avoided. Feeding sugar, especially the cheap sugars, is less liable to disturb their work in the fields, than honey, for they will desert the sugar as soon as honey is to be obtained even in small quantities. The feeders we use generally, are one quart fruit cans with a cover of perforated tin; these cost only 10 cents each, and they are pretty sure to be emptied in a single night. When placed in front of the hive near the entrance, they should be slightly raised with bits of wood, that the bees may have a fair chance at all the holes in the cap at once. If by any means the feeding has been delayed until very late, or if you have many colonies to feed and but little time in which to do it, you can use a feeder that will hold enough at one time to give them their winter rations. This size has been termed a "tea-kettle feeder" on account of its size and shape. I have with such a feeder given a colony 25 Ibs. of syrup in less than a half day. These large ones we place in the upper story, as they may not be emptied in a day or two. If they are set directly on the frames, right over the brood, they will be emptied soonest. When these feeders are first inverted it should be done over a pan of the syrup, for a little will run out before it gets level and quiet. After inversion, they may be carried to any part of the apiary. HOW TO HAKE THE SYRUP. After stirring the sugar and water, you can boil it if you choose, but I assure you it does not do a particle of good, and should you burn it a little, it may do a great deal of harm. If you have an extractor, pour in your sugar, and some boiling water on it, then turn briskly, and your syrup will all be ready to draw off into the feeders. I have fed a barrel of sugar in less than 3 hours and had it all done with, except removing the feeders when they were emptied. The barrel was broken open in a large tank, and the staves and heads were washed with a tea-kettle of boiling water. More water FEEDING AND FEEDEKS. 75 FEEDING AHD FEEDEKS. was poured in, and the whole was stirred with a hoe, until it was a fair syrup. Large feeders were then filled and placed on a shelf in the tank, until they had ceased to drip. From this they were removed to the hives just at dusk, that no robbers might interfere. When all were filled, the tank was rinsed out with the tea-kettle, and the rinsings placed over a hive, in the feeder, so that not an ounce of sugar was wasted. There is no need at all of cream of tartar, vinegar, or anything of the sort, for abundant experiments have shown that sugar and water is all that is needed, and it matters very little what the proportions are. FEEDING FAST OR SLOWLY. I have not been able to see that it makes any material difference whether we feed it all at once, or a little at a time for wintering purposes only, but for brood rearing it is assuredly best to feed a little at a time, say a pint every night. I have during severe drouths reared queens, brood, and had beautiful comb built, by the latter plan. WHBN TO FEED. Although colonies have been wintered well when fed after told or freezing weather, I think much the safer plan is to have it all done during warm dry weather, that they may have it all ripened and thoroughly sealed up. If you have been so careless as to have bees that are in need of stores, at the beginning of winter, I would advise frames of sealed honey if you can get them, and if you cannot, use CANDY; which see. If the candy is covered up with warm chaff cushions or something equivalent, it may be fed at any time, although it does not seem to be as satisfactory under all circumstances as stores sealed up in their combs. In feeding in cool or cold weather, you are very apt to uncover the cluster, or leave openings that will permit the warmth from the cluster to pass off. I have several times had colonies die in the spring after I commenced feeding, and I imagined it was from this cause alone. When they first commence raising brood in the spring, they need to be packed up closely and snugly; making a hole in the quilt or cushions above the cluster, and placing the feeder over this so as to close it completely, does very well, but is not, after all, as safe as giving the feed from below ; for feeding in early spring, especially if the stock is weak, I would prefer the candy, or well filled combs of sealed stores. Since the above was written, we have had quite an August drouth, and it has given me an opportunity of making a farther test of the different modes of feeding for the purpose of inducing brood rearing, and of keeping colonies from starving. Plenty of pollen was to be had from the corn fields, though but little, if any honey. Old stocks hung idly a great part of the day, in and on the hives, and nuclei either ceased rearing brood entirely, or reared very little. Many of the queens stopped laying entirely. At this stage, a little feed during the night would start the queens laying wonderfully, and the fed colony would rush to the fields for pollen in a way that demonstrated at once that feeding at such a time was a very profitable investment, if one wished to build up weak stocks and nuclei. A stock that had been fed a half teacupful only, would go out for pollen an hour earlier than the others, and would bring in double the quantity. A still smaller quantity will set them to building out foundation most beautifully, and I never in my life saw the work in the hive go on so satisfactorily, as it did during the hot, dry, dusty days, under the influence of a very moderate amount of feeding during the night. I take great pleaiure in giving you a feeder, that I think in several respects, rather ahead of the former one. Get a piece of pine, or other light soft wood, two inches thick by three wide, and about a foot long; with a buzz saw set wabbling, plough grooves in it, three in number, asjshown^in the following engraving. SIMPLICITY BEE-FEEDER. We have shown it turned over on one side, that you may see the way in which the grooves are sawed out, so as to leave two thin partitions through the middle. The holes from one partition to the other are to allow all three of the apartments to fill up at once, that the danger of running them over when filling may be avoided. I confess when I made the first one, I was a little fearful, that the bees would drown in them after all; but^when I saw how they clung to the wood>s they'sipped the honey, I had no fear, and after a trial of them for several weeks with all kinds of feed, all the way from sweetened water to syrup as thick FEEDING AND FEEDEBS. FEEDING AND FEEDEES. as tar, all kinds of candied honey, sugar and water stirred tip hastily in all proportions, &e., I have yet to see a single dead bee in a feeder. They may be used inside the hive, in the upper story, before the entrance, or where you choose. They are always emptied in a twinkling, and with perfect safety to the bees. Where we are building up stocks, we set them in the hive, close to the division board. For a full colony, we set them just before the entrance ; if the hive has blocks and a portico, set them across from one entrance block to the other. In this case they may remain there as long as you are feeding. All you . have to do is to go round with your coffee pot of feed just at dusk, and fill them up : you can not drown a bee, even if they are crowded into the feeder when you pour it in. Pour it right on their backs, and all over them; they will like it all the better that way. For feeding the two frame nuclei (see QTJEEN BEARING) set the feeder on the end of the shelf, in front of the entrance. To get them started, pour a little of the feed into the hive; they will very soon " boil out," and discover the feed. Even a weak nucleus will empty the feeder in a very short time—long before morning. If you have but a little feeding to do, just put some sugar in the trough, wet it with a little water, and it is all done, without even soiling your hands. With all the desirable qualities of these feeders, they are cheaper than anything that has heretofore come under our notice. The size we have mentioned, holds about one pint, and if you can not make them conveniently, we will furnish them for 5c each, or sent by mail post-paid, for lOc. FEEDIHG TO PRODUCE COMB HOXEY. You could feed white sugar so as to produce very nice looking comb honey, but it would be sugar syrup in honey comb, after all, as you would find to your sorrow if you should attempt to sell it as honey; and furthermore, it is doubtful if you could do it without losing money, were such not the case. Many are the attempts that have been toade to produce honey by feeding sugar; but all have resulted in failures. Where you can purchase nice white extracted honey for 10c, you may be able to feed it so as to make it pay, if you can get 20 or 25c for the honey in the comb. Several of our neighbors have fed out their extracted fion-ey in this way, and they think it can be done profitably, with the aid of the founda- tion. This should all be done by a few colonies, because they must have quite a quantity, perhaps 25 Ibs., before they are in shape to build comb. The feed should then be given as rapidly as possible, if we wish to get nice white honey; for the quicker we can get our comb honey tfut of the hive, the whiter and nicer will it be. Bees when fed, are to some extent demoralized, and forget to be as particular as they usually are, about being neat and tidy. Sometimes they will scamper over the white honey with dirty feet, like a lot of children who have been fed sweetmeats to an injudicious extent, and this we wish to avoid. I am just now making some experiments in this direction, and have found that a common milk pan placed in a third story, on a Simplicity hive, answers the purpose excellently. The first story contains the brood combs, the second, the section boxes supplied with foundation as usual, while the third contains nothing but the pan of syrup. The plan of preventing the bees from drowning is very simple; a sheet of cheese cloth is spread over the pan, before pouring the honey into it. I have had but very few bees drowned in this manner, but it is not as clean and simple as the wood feeder, and as the cloth may get displaced, is not as sure of success; the most awkward or inexperienced person can hardly make a mistake or have a mishap, with the former, and it is very desirable indeed to have implements for bee culture which possess such qualities. For the purpose of more accurately testing the exact amount of loss incurred in feeding extracted honey, in order to get it into comb honey in the sections, I have had a platform scale made with a dial, that the weight of the hive and all the apparatus may be seen at a glance. A Simplicity hive, 3 story, with section boxes in the second story, was placed thereon, and when the combs in the sections were partly filled, the colony was fed, with the milk pan, as mentioned above, about 50 Ibs. I then watched, with great interest, the hand on the dial, to see how many pounds they lost in weight, while the combs were being cfapped over. To my great surprise, I found that the honey weighed just about as much in the combs as it did in the pan; even after the combs were all nicely capped over, there had been a loss of only about one pound in ten, of the honey fed. As the extracted honey was bought of a neighbor for 10 cts. and the filled sections were readily sold for 25 cts., FEEDING AND FEEDERS. 77 FEEDING AND FEEDERS. the investment was a paying one, without question. There is one point that should not be lost sight of, however; that is, before the honey will be stored in sections, the brood combs will be filled to repletion, and a large amount of brood will be started. Perhaps 25 Ibs. will be used in this way, before they will commence to store in the sections, in real earnest. On this account the brood apartment should be contracted, and all combs removed except those actually needed for the brood. A neighbor now extracts sufficient honey to feed in the fall, for the purpose of getting all his unfinished sections filled, that he may not have such a quantity of dead capital in hand over winter, and no unfilled sections to be taken off and cared for until another season. This is quite an item, as we often have, in our apiary, several thousand partly filled sections to keep over, and a great many will be almost full enough to be marketable. But few colonies should be chosen to do this work, and they should be gentle to handle, as a matter of convenience to the one who does the work. CAUTION IN REGARD TO FEEDING. Before closing, I would most earnestly caution the inexperienced to beware of getting the bees robbing. I have advised feeding only in the night time, to avoid danger, for attempting to feed in the middle of the day will sometimes result in the robbing and destruction of strong colonies. Where food comes in such quantities, and in such an unnatural way, they seem to forget to post sentinels as usual, and before they have time to recover, bees will pour in from all the hives in the apiary. I do not know who is to be pitied most at such a time, the bees, their helpless owner, or the innocent neighbors and passers by. Sometimes, all that can be done is to let your colony slide, and wish for it to get dark that the greedy "elves" may be obliged to go home. Now when you commence feeding, remember that my last words on the matter were," LOOK OUT." It is now July, 1878, and after feeding perhaps a ton of the grape sugar, I am prepared to say that it is a decided success for stimulating brood rearing, for rearing queens, and building up colonies. The only objection I can discover to using it for wintering is its great propensity to candy or harden in the cells (even if it is fed in the form of a very thin syrup), at the approach of cold or even cool weather. It is true, the fcees will use it to some extent, even in it solid state ; but as I have lost two colonies by starvation, when their combs were quite heavy with the solidified grape sugar, I would not recommend it alone, for wintering purposes. There is just one other objection. The syrup is of a glutinous nature, and when it gets on the bees sometimes glues their wings in such a way that they can not fly, if they are fed in the open feeders, such as have been described for cane sugar or honey. On this account, I would use the Hams' feeder figured below, or one on a similar principle. These may be made of any size, but the one sent me for a sample was made of a piece of tin about 2|x4i. Eoll it up and solder the edges, so as to make a little cup. The bottom is just a round piece of ^ tin, laid on and soldered. This cup is to be inverted in a square tin box as shown in the cut. It is soldered to each of the four sides, so as to be about i of an inch from the bottom, or so that no bee can crawl inside. To fill it, dip it in the syrup while on its side, and raise it out, in the position shown in the cut. The bees can take every drop out but they can not possibly get daubed. It can be set in the hive, at the entrance, or any where you wish; pint feeders, can easily be made for 5c. Below w,e give an engraving of the device to be fastened on a quart fruit jar. HAINS' FEEDER FOR A FRUIT JAR. The jar may be filled level full, before the cover is put on, and it is then to be inverted quickly, in the same manner as the pepper box feeders. The advantage it has over the latter is that it feeds more rapidly, the places of exit being larger, and the holes never get stopped up and need punching out. THE DUNHAM FEEDER. This is simply carrying the idea that friend Hams almost strikes on, a little farther. The lady who invented it, uses it as a pepper box feeder; that is, she simply has the bottom perforated. As this arrangement is much more apt to be leaky, especially, if the hive and machine are not kept exactly level, FEBTILE WOEKEE8. FEETILE WOEKEES, I would prefer the Hains plan of having a shallow diah at the bottom, instead of perforations. We give below a drawing of both kinds. DUNHAM FEEDER. MY IMPROVEMENT. The Dunham feeder, in either of the forms given above, would answer nicely for building up nuclei and for queen rearing. It is made so as to be hung in the hive'like a frame, and the syrup is allowed to flow out at the slot along the lower edge, only as fast as the bees take it. Ho bee can possibly get soiled or daubed by this arrangement, and as the feeder holds enough to last a long time, we can overlook the trifling objection of its having to be taken out of the hive every time it is filled. This feeder is filled by being plunged all over in the syrup, while being held lengthwise up and down; it is then turned to its natural position with the top bar uppermost, lifted out, and hung in the hive. With a large tin box or pail for ttie purpose, something like a comb basket but larger, feeding can be done very expeditiously, for these feeders can easily be made to hold 20 or 25 Ibs. For queen rearing, building out foundation, or building up colonies, the feeder should be so made as to feed not over a pound or two a day. With a weak colony, perhaps not even so much as that should be fed at once. I have also made some experiments with the liquid syrup or glucose, and find it to work equally as well, but as it costs 5c per lb., and the sugar only 3i, it has not been much used. The glucose is like very thick honey, and can not be made to candy. It is quite unlike the syrup of grape sugar, for the latter turns solid without getting like thick syrup at all; as the grape sugar contains a large amount of water of crystaliza-tion, much more than the glucose syimp, it may be that the latter is just as cheap, if not the cheapest food for the bees after all. It wijl certainly never candy in the cells, and it is solthick it would probably need very little ripening in the cells. There is very little danger of either of these substances getting in our comb honey, for the bees will not notice them at all, at a time when honey is plentiful in the fields. FBXlTXXiXS WORK22B.S. These queer inmates, or rather occasional inmates, of the hive, are worker bees that lay eggs. Aye, and the eggs they lay hatch, too; but they only hatch drones, and never worker bees. The drones are rather smaller than the drones produced by a queen, but they are nevertheless drones, in every respect, so far as we can discover. It may be well to remark that ordinary worker bees are not neuters, as they are sometimes called; they are considered undeveloped females. Microscopic examination shows the undeveloped germ of nearly every organ found in the queen, and these organs may become, at any time, sufficiently developed, to allow the bee to lay eggs, but never to allow of fertilization by meeting the drone as the queen does. CAUSE OF FERTILE WORKERS. It has been over and over again suggested, that bees capable of this egg laying duty are those reared in the vicinity of queen cells, and that by some means they have re-received a small portion of the royal jelly, necessary to their development as bee mothers. This theory has, I believe, been entirely disproven by many experiments; and it is now pretty generally conceded that fertile workers may make their appearance in any colony or nucleus that has been for some days queenless, and without the means of rearing a queen. Not only may one bee take upon herself these duties, but there may be many of them ; and wherever the bee-keeper has been so careless, as to leave his bees destitute of either brood or queen, for 10 days or two weeks, you may be pretty sure he will find evidences of their presence in the shape of eggs scattered about promiscuously; sometimes one, but oftener a half dozen in a single cell. If the matter has been going on for some time, you will see now and then a drone larva, and sometimes two or three crowding each other in their single cell; some times they start queen cells over this drone larva; the poor motherless orphans seeming to feel that something is wrong, like a drowning toan, are disposed to catch at any straw. HOW TO GET RID OF FERTILE WORKERS. I feel very much like saying again, that prevention is better than cure; if a colony, from any cause, becomes queenless, be sure they have unsealed brood of the proper age to raise another; and when this one is raised, be sure that she becomes fertile. It can never do any harm to give a queenless colony eggs and brood, and it may be the saving of it. But suppose you have been so careless as to allow a colony to become queenless, and get weak, what are you to do? If you attempt to give them a queen, and a fertile worker is present, she will be pretty sure to get stung; it is, in fact, often almost impossi- FERTILE WORKERS. 79 FIGWORT. ble to get them to accept even a queen cell. The poor fellows get into a habit of accepting one of the egg laying workers as a queen, and they will have none other, until she is removed; yet you cannot find her, for she is just like any other bee; you may get hold of her, possibly, by carefully noticing the way in which the other bees deport themselves towrard her, or you may catch her in the act of egg laying, but even this often fails, for there may be several such in the hive at once. You may give them a small strip of comb containing eggs and brood, but they will seldom start a good queen cell, if they start any at all; for, in the majority of cases, a colony having fertile workers seems perfectly demoralized, so far as getting them into regular work is concerned. My friends, you have allowed them to get into this condition, by being negligent in supplying brood when they were on the verge of ruin for the want of a single egg or young larva and the remedy now is to give them a fresh invoice of bees, brood, and combs from some other hive; if you wish to make a sure thing, give them at least three good combs of brood and|bees. This is almost starting a new colony, but it is the cheapest way, when they get so they will not receive a queen. If the stock has become very weak, it may be best to unite them with some other colony for it certainly does not pay to have them killing queens, and tearing down queen cells. If the fertile workers are discovered when they first make their appearance, before you see any of the drone larvae scattered about, they will often accept a queen cell, or a fertile queen without difficulty. I have before advised giving all colonies or nuclei, some eggs and brood just before the young queen is old enough to take her flight; when this is done, there can be but little chance of fertile workers, for they will always have the means of rearing another queen, if their own is lost in taking her flight. Sometimes a fertile worker may be disposed of, by moving the combs into an empty hive, placed at a little distance from the other; the bees will nearly all go into their old hive, but the queen, as she thinks herself to be, will remain on the combs. The returning bees will then accept a queen or queen cell. After all is right the combs may be returned, and the fertile worker will be—well, I do not know just what does become of her, but I suspect she either attends to her legitimate business, or gets killed. See that every hive contains, at all times, during the spring and summer months, at least, brood suitable for rearing a queen, and you will never see a fertile worker. HOW TO DETECT THE PRESENCE OE FERTILE WORKERS. If you do not find any queen, and see eggs scattered around promiscuously, some in drone, and some in worker cells, some attached to the side of the cell, instead of the centre of the bottom, where the queen lays them, several in one cell, and none in the next, you may be pretty sure you have a fertile worker. Still later, you will see the worker brood capped with the high convex cappings, indicating clearly, that the brood will never hatch out worker bees. Finding two or more eggs in a cell is never conclusive, for the queen often deposits them in a feeble colony where there are not bees enough to cover the brood. The eggs deposited by a fertile queen are in regular order, as one would plant a field of corn, but those from fertile workers, and usually from drone laying queens, are irregularly scattered about. FIG-WORT (Scrofularia Nodosa). This plant is variously known as Square Stalk, Heal All, Carpenter's Square, Rattle Weed, THE SIMPSON HONEY PLANT. FOUL BROOD. • 80 &c., the name indicating some of its peculiarities, or real or supposed valuable medical properties. Much has recently been said in regard to it, under the name of the Simpson Honey Plant, J. A. Simpson, of Alexis, Ills., having first called attention to it. The engraving presented will give a fail-idea of it, and will enable any one to distinguish it at once, if it grows in their locality. The pretty little ball shaped flower, with a lip somewhat like the Pitcher plant, is usually found filled with honey, unless the bees are so numerous as to prevent its accumulation. This honey is of course thin, like that from clover or other plants, when first .gathered, and is in fact rather sweetened wrafcer, but still it is crude honey, and the plant promises to furnish a larger quantity than any thing else I have met with. We have had one report from a single plant under cultivation, and as might be expected, the quantity of honey yielded was very much increased, and the plant grew to a great height, continuing to bloom and yield honey for full four months. The little flower when examined closely, is found to be very beautiful. The following is Mr. Simpson's description of the plant: It is a large coarse grower from 4 to 8 feet in height, coarse leaf, and a branching" top covered with innumerable little balls about tht size of No. 1 shot. When in bloom there is just one little flower leaf on each ball, which is dark purple, or violet at the outer point and lighter as it approaches the see fertilizing the flowers, to enable them to produce fruit at all. It seems that the small drop of honey which nature has placed in the flower is for the express purpose of attracting bees and other insects, that the blossoms may be surely and properly fertilized. It has been stated that unless we have a few hours of sunshine when early cherries are in bloom, we shall have no cherries at all; and occasionally we have a season when cold rain storms so prevent the bees from getting out, that not a cherry is produced. It is well worth while, I believe, for an apiarist to locate near extensive orchards, even if he should not think of planting fruit trees, with the especial end in view, of having his bees benefitted thereby. A large yield of honey* from fruit bloom is pretty sure to lay the foundation of a good honey season. The very best time to transfer bees is when the honey just begins to come in from this source, for they are then all busy and happy, and but little honey is in the way to run down and hinder the work. I have looked at populous colonies during fruit bloom, that had not a dozen cells full of honey in the hive, in the morning, but by night the hive would seem very well supplied; the next day would show the same aspect of affairs, indicating how rapidly they consume stores, when rearing brood largely. Should a stormy day intervene, stocks in this condition will be injured very much, if they do not starve, by being obliged to put the unsealed brood on such short allowance. A friend once came to me, in May, to have me come and take a look at his bees; he said they were sick. It was a box hive, and as I turned it over, I agreed with him that they were sick, and no mistake. I called for a bowl of sugar, and after stirring in some water, I sprinkled it all over the bees and combs. In less than an hour, they were all perfectly well, and he paid quite a tribute to my skill in compounding medicines for sick bees. My friends, be sure that your bees do not get "sick" during fruit blossoming time, nor afterward either. G. GILL-OVER-THE-GROUND. (Nepata Glechoma.) Some 40 or 50 years ago, when this county was mostly woods, my father and mother commenced life on a little farm near where I am now living. Woman like, my mother wanted some flowers around the log house that they called home, and going to a neighbor's a few miles away, she took up various roots and plants. It was just about the time, or a little before fruit trees bloom, and amid the shrubbery, she found a little blue flower, growing on a vine. As blue has always been my favorite color, I can readily excuse her for wanting to take home a root of this humble looking little vine. The vine grew and throve "mightily;" so much so, that when my father moved back to the old GILL-OVEB-TnE-GHOUND. farm after a dozen years absence, he found my mother's blue flower all over, every where, and giving fair promise of being able to choke all the grass and almost everything else out entirely. When 4>we boys" commenced trying to make a garden, we scolded so about this "pesky weed" that my father said it must be thoroughly "dug out," before it went any farther. After some feeble and ineffectual attempts at getting it out, he finally offered a younger brother a fine colt, if he would rid the farm of the weed. I do not know how hard he tried, but I believe he never got the colt. It transpired in later years, that this plant yielded a great deal of honey, and in some localities favorable to its growth, such as the beds of streams where there is plenty of rich vegetable mould, it has furnished so much honey that it has been extracted in considerable quantities* Coming in, as it does, between fruit blossoms and clover, I think it might well be given a place on our honey farm, even if it does hold so tenaciously to the soil when it once gets a start. That you all may recognize it, I give you a cut of roots, branches, leaves and flower. The honey is rather dark, and I believe a little strong, but if it is allowed to become perfectly ripened, I think it will ,pass very well. Perhaps the greatest benefit to be derived from it, however, will be to keep the bees uninterruptedly rearing brood, until clover and locusts begin to furnish a supply. This plant is a near relative of the catnip, which it closely resembles in the shape of the leaf. Both were originally from Kepata, in Germany, hence the Latin names, Nepata Cataria, and Nepata Glechoma. I presume it would be an easy matter to raise this plant from the seed, but I would hesitate some in sending out such seed. It spreads much more rapidly than the catnip, because it catches in the soil like strawberry plants, from the little rootlets shown in the engraving. GOLDEN ROD. (Solidago). This, in some localities, furnishes the bulk of the great yield of fall honey. It grows almost all over the U. S., and there are so many different varieties that it would be almost out of the question to try to give you a picture of it at all; the botany describes 53 different varieties, and it is common to find a half dozen growing within a few. rods, Its GOLDEK BOD. GOLDEK ROD. name describes it, so that almost any one should be able to identify it. If you see autumn flowers as yellow as gold, growing on the top of tall rods, you may be pretty sure they belong to this family. The flowers are very small, but grow in great masses, sometimes in long racemes, and again in dense bunches. The general characteristics are such that, after a little practice, you can readily identify any one of the family. Bees are almost incessantly humming over the flowers in some localities, in others, they seem to pass them entirely unnoticed. I have passed it in localities where beekeepers say they have never seen a bee on it at all. Bees are seen on it, occasionally, in our locality, but I do not think they get enough honey from it in ordinary seasons, to make it perceptible in the hive. The honey is usually very thick, and of a rich golden color, much like the blossoms. When first gathered, it has, like the honey of most other fall flowers, a rather rank weedy smell and taste; but after it. has thoroughly ripened, it is rich and pleasant. On getting the first taste of Golden Rod honey, one might think they would never like any other; but like many other kinds, one soon tires of the peculiar aromatic flavor, and goes back to the clover honey as the great universal staple to be used with bread and butter. A patch of Golden Rod might have a place on our honey farm, and perhaps, with cultivation, it might do better and give a surer crop in all localities; but as it is only a common weed on our farms, I would hardly favor a general distribution of the seed. THE LAWK OK CHAFF HIVE. H. HIVE MAKIRTCr. Although it is very important to have good, nicely fitting, well made hives for the bees, I would, by no means, encourage the idea, that the hive is going to insure the crop of honey. I think, as Mr. Quinby used to say, that a good swarm of bees would store almost as much honey in a half barrel or nail keg, as in the most elaborate and expensive hive made, other things being equal. This is, supposing we had a good swarm, in the height of the honey season. If the colony was small, it would do much better, if put into a hive so small that the bees could nearly or quite fill it, thus economizing the animal heat, that they might keep up the temperature for brood rearing, and the working of wax. Also, should the bees get their nail keg full of honey, unless more room were given them, at just the right moment, a considerable loss of honey would be the result. The thin walls of the nail keg would hardly be the best economy, for a wintering hive, nor for a summer hive either, unless it was well shaded from the direct rays of the sun. Hives with thick walls, made of some porous material that is a good non-conductor of heat, as well as an absorbent of moisture, have been well proven to have decided advantages over hives made of a single thickness of boards, especially for wintering; but, as they are heavy to move around, and rather more expensive in the start, I think it well to have both winter and summer hives in the same apiary. The single walled hive which we call the Simplicity, on account of the simpleness of its construction and management, answers almost as well as the winter hives for summer use, and can also be so arranged as to do very well for win* ter; the winter hive which we call the chaff hive, because the walls are made about four inches thick, and packed with chaff, are much the safest for winter and spring, and are also very convenient for summer use, except that they are not easily carried about. These chaff hives are permanently a two sto-8 ry hive; that is, the upper story is not removable, as is the case with the Simplicity hive. On this account, the latter is much the cheapest hive in an apiary, for a single story can be used for small swarms or nuclei, and answers every purpose of a full hive, until more room is needed, and then an extra story can be added or even a third, as the case may require. For these reasons, the Simplicity hive is the one most used, and is always needed, no matter how many chaff hives you may have. HOW TO MAKE A SIMPLICITY HIVE. If I were going off on a journey, and should desire a lot of new hands to make some hives in my absence, I should talk to them about as follows. Boys, I want these hives good and nice, and, to have them so, you must be careful. The first thing you are to do is to get some lumber, .and, if you can, you would better get white pine. *If you cannot get this, you would better use white wood. If you cannot get that either, get the best lumber that they have for house building, in your locality. For the body of the hive, you want boards just one foot wide. For the cover and bottom boards, which are one and the same thing, you want boards not less than 161 inches wide. For the narrow boards, we get best barn boards, and we pay for them, at this date, $24. per M.; for the wide boards, we have to pay about $28. As soon as you get your lumber home, have it nicely "stick-ed up." I say nicely, for I do not believe I ever had a boy that would put up lumber safely, unless he was told a great many times. Your lumber would better be 16 feet long, for this length works with less waste than any that is shorter. Kow, before you stick it up, you are to prepare a level place for the first board; or rather, you are to have the first board lay straight and flat. If it is to be left out of doors, it should have slant enough to carry off the water. If you have shop room, you can put it in doors. Do not lay the first board on the floor, but hare HIVE MAKING. 86 some sticks under it. These sticks for sticking up lumber should be of an exact thickness, and I think it will pay to provide some that are just right. If you are making many Ijives, you will have refuse sticks, that will come very handy for this purpose. The sticks should be about 11 inches wide, exactly | thick, and 15 or 20 inches long. A stick should be placed at each end of the boards, and two more between them, so as to make the spaces about equal. Put the sticks exactly over each other, or you will, if you have a large pile, have the boards bent or warped by the weight of those above. When they are all piled up square and true, you can feel safe in regard to them. Even if the lumber is to be used within three days, I would put it up in this way as soon as it is unloaded. If you are going to make accurate work, you must have your lumber all of an exact thickness; and as it is much easier to talk and write about having it exactly i than it is to make it so, I will explain to you a kind of gauge that I had to give the planing mill men, before we planed our own lumber. Below is a picture of it, full size. HIVE MAKING. 0ATTGKE FOR PLAKIKG LUMBER. When you carry them the lumber, tell them, if it is planed so that the "too large" notch just fits it, it will have to be planed over again; and that, if it goes into the "too small" notch, it is spoiled. This will soon get them into the habit of having it "just right," every time. Their planers must also be so adjusted, that both edges of the board are just right. Since the 18 in. Lilliputians cost only $77., if you have much work to do, it is, by far, the most profitable way, to have a planer of your own. Then you can set it just as accurately as you choose, and it will pay for itself, where there is work to do, in a few weeks. The usual price for planing is $1.00 per M., and we can do that amount without trouble per hour, with a 41 horse power engine. If the lumber is not well seasoned, it may be well to have it planed to the too large gauge; but this is a very bad way of doing, on many accounts. Get your lumber seasoned as well as it possibly can be, before you commence work, and, if you are obliged to use that which is not well seasoned, cut your stuH to the exact length, then stick it up, and leave it until the very last moment, before you take it to the exact width you wish it. This is, perhaps, one of the surest ways, especially when the work is not all to be sent off immediately. We frequently leave covers in this way, and only bring them to the finishing width the very day they are to be shipped. It is especially needful that the covers be well seasoned, for a season check would let in water, and endanger the life of the colony. A great many of Barnes Foot Power saws are in use; therefore I shall give my directions for them, and, if you have different saws, you can modify the directions to suit your conditions. We will first talk about making the body of the hive. Your pile of one foot boards is to be cut up in lengths of 37 inches. Be-member, just one inch more than a yard. To avoid making mistakes, you can cut a stick of just that length. If you have quite a pile of stuff, a gauge that you can push the boards against will be very handy. Always commence at the best end of the boards. If the end is checked or bad, allow a little for waste. Cut off 5 lengths, and leave the surplus of half a foot or more on the last piece; that is, do not cut it off. Pile these last pieces by themselves. You will need an assistant to do this, and if you have a boy or girl 10 or 15 years old, they can help "papa" a "big lot," in making hives. The table of the saws, as it comes from the factory, is hardly large enough to make hives on conveniently, and so we will piece out the stationary side by a sort of a leaf about 1 foot wide. This leaf is easily fastened on securely, by a couple of hard wood strips screwed on the underside of both leaf and table. After your boards are all cut up, you will proceed to bring them to an exact width and straighten one side. As we want the boards to finish 111, we will trim them, the first time, to about 111; those that will not hold out this width, can be saved to make frames of. To bring one side straight, you must set the parallel bar at the left of the saw, at just the right distance from it, and then push the boards through, holding closely up to the gauge. Very likely, when you start out, your saw may "run," as it is termed; this may result from two causes. If the teeth are filed longer on one side than on the other, and insufficiently set, the saw will be very likely to run either into, or out of the lumber. This will not do at all, for we can never have an accurate hive, unless we get a straight edge, in the first HIVE MAKING. 87 HIVE MAKING. place, to work from. Give the saw set enough to make it run clear, as explained in SECTION HONEY BOXES, and have the teeth so that the cut ahead of the saw shows as in the diagram below. IMPROPERLY FILED. PROPERLY FILED. A second cause of trouble may sometimes be found in your parallel bar, which must be just parallel, or you cannot have a true straight cut. The diagram will show you the consequences of having this bar improperly set. J&/ SETTING THE PARALLEL BAR, In fig. 1, the bar is set so that the board between the saw and the gauge wedges, as it were; and, when this is the trouble, you will see the surface, at A, shows as if it had been planed; this is done by the face of the saw, which rubs or burnishes the wood, as it squeezes past. The remedy is plain; move the end, D, away from the saw a little, or, the other end nearer to it, as may be necessary to preserve the proper distance. In fig. 2 we see the opposite extreme, and, when this is the trouble, you will find it almost impossible to keep your board up against the gauge, for the saw is all the time crowding it off. The piece, B, will constantly be getting too narrow, and the strip that comes off, too wide. Before you attempt to do any work, and thus spoil your lumber, you should test your saw and gauges, on some refuse pieces. When it is all right, the saw should run clear and smoothly in the center of the saw cut, and the stuff should easily be kept close up to the gauge. While you have been doing this work, the movable side to the table should be taken off, as it is not needed, and would only be in the way. After one edge is trimmed, set your gauge so as to cut exactly 111, and bring the boards all to this width. Now, before going further, you are to sort the boards, so as to have the heart side of the lumber come on the outside of the hive. If you look at the end of each board, you can see, by the circles of growth, which is the heart side, as is shown in the cuts. WHY BOARDS WARP. At B, you see a board cut off just at one side of the heart of the tree; at C, near the bark; at A, the heart is in the centre of the board. You all know, almost without being told, that boards always warp like C; that is, the heart side becomes convex. The reason is connected with the shrinkage of boards in seasoning. When a log lies until it is perfectly seasoned, it often checks, as in fig. 2. You will observe that the wood shortens in the direction of the circles, and but very little, if any, along the lines that run from the bark to the centre. To allow this shrinkage in one direction, the log splits or checks in the direction shown. ISTow, to go back to our boards, you will see, that B shrinks more than A, because A has the heart of the tree in its center; that C will shrink, in seasoning, much more on the bark side than on the heart side; that this can not fail to bring the board out of a level ; and that the heart side will always be convex. You have all seen bee hives, probably, with the corners separated and gaping open, while the middle of the boards was tight up in place. The reason was that the mechanic had put the boards on wrong side out. If the heart side had been outward, the corners of the hive would have curled inwardly, and, if the middle had been nailed securely, the whole hive would have been likely to have close, tight joints, even if exposed to the sun, wind, and rain. This matter is especially important in making covers to hives. If your boards are all sorted with the heart side downward, we are ready to proceed. I say heart side downward, for you want them placed just as they are to be used on the saw. I have seen boys that would turn every board over, just as they picked it up to put on the saw table, instead of piling the whole just as they were to be used. I have seen others that would carry each one of several hundred boards 6 or 8 ft. to the saw, when the whole pile might have been put almost within one foot of the place where it was to be used. It is very awkward and extravagant, to do work in this way. Before we cut these boards into sides and ends, a groove is to be sawed for the should- HIVE MAKIHG, 88 HIVE MAKING. er under the cover, and the lower edge is to be beveled, to allow the hives to be piled over each other. The following cut shows a side and end view of the board. The groove, A, is to be just 2 inches from the top B, and is to be I deep. This you can easily do by setting your parallel bar just 2 inches from the saw, and screwing the table top up until the saw cuts i deep, cutting the groove in the heart side, of course. Kow, to take off the three cornered strip at the lower edge, a little different rigging is required. In fact, we must have a table to slide the boards on, and it must set at an angle. This angle we will have 45 degrees, because our table will then be just right for making the corners of the hives. The beveling platform is easily made of a piece of 2 inch plank, 6 inches wide, and 21 feet long. Take a three cornered piece from the lower edge, and then nail this piece against the other edge, in the position shown by the following cut. **> BEVELING PLATFORM. This piece, A, is to rest directly on the top of the parallel bar of your saw table. When you get it adjusted so that the thin edge, B, fits closely to the table, screw it fast to the bar. This allows the piece to be adjusted upon any spot on the table, and gives us a square mitre to any stuff that may be laid on it while it is being sawed. Adjust the whole at the right distance from the saw, and then take off the corner of all the boards, on the opposite side from which we sfewed the groove, as shown at the bottom of C, in the figure on the preceding page. How remove the beveling platform, and you are ready to cut up the boards. We have all this time been using the rip saw; we will now change and put on the cut off. I think we would better "oil up," at about this stage of proceeding. I do not know why it is, but I scarcely ever take hold of a foot power saw when it would not be greatly improved by giving it a thorough oiling. It is really a saving of time, as well as of strength, to oil your machinery often. Much time is also saved, in changing saws, by having your saws and wrench close at hand. The 15e. screw driver, illustrated elsewhere, exactly fits Barnes saw mandrel, and we keep one tied, by a stout cord, to the frame of the machine, that it may be always in readiness. To be obliged to stop your work, and hunt for tools when you are in a hurry, is "awful." You would better fix some kind of a drawer in your saw table, to keep your saws, or they may get down among the rubbish, and be lost. I have known people to lose their cut off saw, and be obliged to stop and hunt for it; and I should not be surprised, if they scolded somebody who was not to blame at all. I have spoken of having one of the children help by handing you the boards, &c.; if they do, be sure that you make the work pleasant for them. If you lose your tools and scold, you certainly will not make good hives. You probabty have not made any mistakes, thus far; but now, before you commence cutting off the pieces to the exact size, be careful. As you will need a pair of iron frames for putting your hives together, I think you had better have them on hand now, to take your measurements by. if you attempt; to measure with a square, you will get it wrong side up or something, and get your gauges set wrong. It was but yesterday, that one of the boys cut up a whole pile of boards to the wrong length, because he looked on the wrong side of the square. For fear he would do something of the kind, I had given him a board just right, for a sample, but some one else wanted it, and so he took the dimensions, and it turned out as I have said. Go to your blacksmith, and get him to make two iron frames like the picture below. They are to be made of | inch square iron, and the dimensions, inside, are to be as exactly 16 by 20J as you and he, both, can make them. When you have, with some trouble, got them nearly right, do not say, that is near enough, but make them exact. PAIR OF IROH GAUGE FRAMES, FOR HIVE MA-KING. The corners, you must finish out with a file, so that they are sharp and true. For convenience of slipping them over the hives, they are to be made a little flaring, like a barrel hoop; if they are 1 inch larger, each way, on the large side, it will be about right. Now, for the buzz saw. You will observe that the sliding half of the table has a bar bolted to its top, for a square cut off gauge; HIYE MAKING. I this gauge must be set accurately, like the other, or you will have much trouble. It is to be so set, that, when you cut off a board held closely against it, it will be exactly square across the end. You can test this with a good square, but I think I would prefer to take a board with true straight sides; cut off a little, say a half inch; now turn it over, and cut off again; if the strip cut off is of exactly the same width at each end, your gauge is set true. For fear you may not get the idea, I give you a picture. HOW TO SET THE CROSS CUT BAB. If your gauge is set right, the slices, C, will be exactly straight; i. e., not wedge shaped, even if you turn the board over so as to cut from the opposite edge at every cut you make. When you are satisfied with this, set your parallel bar, so as to cut the side pieces of the hive to just go into the iron frame length wise, and the end pieces, to just go in cross wise. The 37 inch boards will just make one of each. If you want to test the accuracy of your work, pile the boards on each other, and see if they are all exactly alike all around. I should, right here, suggest that you have your wrork nicely piled up, all the time, and a couple of willow clothes baskets, set near the saw, will be just the thing to toss all your odds and ends into. One of them should be set directly under the table, to catch all the sawdust. Do not let a scrap or splinter be thrown on the floor. Always put them in the basket. It will pay well in dollars and cents, and then, when a visitor comes in, he will say, "Why, what beautiful work you are doing, and what a pleasant place this is." On the contrary, if you have your lumber all scattered about, and sticks breaking and crashing under foot among your tools, he would be very apt to say, "Well, I'm glad I do not have to work and drudge through life as.that fellow does." Another thing; if your stuff is scattered about, you will very likely miss some, and, after you have changed your gauges that were set so nicely and carefully, you will have to go and set them over, just to finish the few odd pieces; this second time you will be likely to do it in a hurry, because you are cross about having been so careless, and perhaps this will be the means of making a bad job of the whole lot of hives. Keep all ) HIYE MAKIKG. your pieces piled up square and true, and all together, so that none can be missed. You will remember that we had some longer pieces, that came from the extreme ends of the boards. In cutting them up, you can save lumber, by making twro sides or three ends of these pieces, or even two sides and one end, as the stuff may happen to come out. While cutting up stuff, I would have a gauge of the length wanted, right handy, and every little while, just try a board, and see if it is just exactly right. If you have a board that you know is just right, stand it on end, beside the pieces you are cutting, and then pass your finger along their tops* and you can readily see which is longest, if there is any difference. Our stuff is now all in two piles, and, if we wish to come out even, there should be just as many end boards as side boards; that is, the two piles should be of equal height; as you come pretty near the last, you can manage so as to "fetch up" the pile that is lowest. You will remember that these boards were cut off, so that the short ones just fill the iron gauge frames crosswise, and the long ones, lengthwise; well, now we are to mitre or bevel the corners, so that, when four of the boards are set up in this shape—see cut— the iron frame will just drive over them. You will observe that the top of the hive shows that the boards are put together just like a picture frame; and to saw this mitre is our next job. Put on the beveling platform, as before, and, with your cut off saw keen and sharp, cut off a corner so as to leave a sharp feather edge on each end of every board. You can tell when your gauge is right, by the way in which the iron hoop drives over the four boards. If the angle is just right, the corners should close up so as to leave scarcely a visible crack where the joint is. All the boards are, of course, to be mitred at the corners in this way, and then we are ready to take off the strips that go around under the covers. If you will look at the cut of the beveling platform, you will see beside it, a 3 cornered bar with a couple of wires twisted in it. This bar is to be fastened, by the wires, to the planed iron track on which the movable side of the saw table slides, the movable side being removed, JSTow set the beveling platform so close to HIVE MAKING. 90 HIVE MAKING. the saw, that you can cut the strip clear off, leaving the desired shouldef, as in the cut. TAKING OFF THE STKIP UNDER THE COVER. In the above cut, let A be the stationary side of the saw table, B the square end of the parallel bar to said table, and H the saw. C is the beveling platform screwed to B, E the side or end of the hive lying on it, F the strip that goes under the cover, and G the 3 cornered piece that is wired to the iron track. This last piece is to rest the square edge of the board against while pushing it through, to cut off this strip. You will observe that the table is screwed up high enough to allow the saw to cut just into the notch I, that we sawed in all the pieces before they were cut up. Our side pieces are now finished, and the ends are all done, except cutting the rabbets for the frames to hang on. This operation is so simple, it need hardly be described. In the accompanying cut you will see a cross section of one of the ends that has been rab-beted, and one that has not. We first saw in I, and then saw down from B, to meet it. As the lumber is I, if we take out f, we shall have just a half inch of wood left. When the metal rabbet is in place, and the frame swung in the hive, the top of the frame should be just on a level with the shoulder C. As our frame is just 91 deep, and we want just about I under the bottom bar, making 91 in all, we want just 91 inches from the shoulder, C, to the bottom edge of the boards, B. This will insure just I between the upper and lower frames when the hives are used with two stories. If our metal rabbets are made to stand just i inch higher than the wood, and the projecting arm of the top bar is also i inch, the shoulder, A, will be just I inch lower than the shoulder, C. You will observe that I have calculated for I between the upper and lower frames, and between the bottom of the frames and the bottom of the hive. Well, i inch would be still better than I, if we were sure the lumber would never shrink by after seasoning so as to make it any less than I ; as it will shrink some in spite of us, I think we would better calculate on f. This is also the distance we need between the frames and the outside of the hive, all around; not more than f, and not less than i. In cutting out your rabbet, you will, of course, first cut down from A, and I would gauge from D instead of from the sharp edge, B, thus avoiding inaccuracy. When you cut in from B, rest the stuff on the shoulder, C, and you will have no trouble in getting the saw cuts to match nicely. If you have a rabbeting head, you can take the wood all out at one operation, but then you have shavings instead of strips, and it takes a little more power. The strips are of no particular use, it is true, but we find them very handy for sticking up covers, as you will see presently. While I think of it, in the absence of a foot power saw, you can make the bevels and shoulders by grinding a plane in the shape you wish; in this way you can get very nice joints, but it is rather slow business. The body of our hive is nearly all done except the handles, or rather hand holes that you lift them by; these are made with a wabbling saw. Sometimes our saws have a fashion of "wabbling," just when we would rather they wouldn't, and it would seem to be quite an easy matter to make one wabble : so it is, but, with the Barnes mandrels, it is not quite so easy after all; because they have their saws run-on a shoulder that is considerably larger than where the screw is cut. The way in which wre make a saw wabble ordinarily, is by a pair of wooden washers like this cut. But the Barnes saw arbor requires that we, after making the washer as above, cut on the side of one of them a shoulder something like this, to hold the saw true. The idea is to have the saw securely clamped between the two wooden washers; to have it clamped so it cannot really slip round, or out of true; I mean by out of true, so that the teeth are just as long on one side as on the other. Unless you have it so, the cavity will be deeper at one side than at the other. The first washer should be thick enough to allow the saw to clear the table, and, as the movable side of the table is adjusted, we can give the wabbling saw all the space it needs. You will need both the parallel and cross cut gauge for this business, and they are to be so set that, when the boards of the hive are carefully and slowly dropped down on the saw, one end at a time, a nice cavity for the fingers will be cut. To HIVE MAKING. 91 HIVE MAKING. smooth out the bottom of the cut, you have only to move your board slightly side ways just before you lift it off the saw. This trims off the strings, as it were, left between the saw teeth. I would have these handles made in the sides, as well as the ends, for it is often convenient to lift a hive, when the ends, one or both, are not convenient to get at; for you must remember the simplicity hives can be placed tight up against each other, as there is nothing in the way of so doing. HOW TO MAKE THE COVERS. For those you will need pretty good lumber, and it must be of such width that, when fully seasoned and finished, it will be 16 inches; or, to make it plainer, each cover board, when done, must exactly fill the iron gauge frames we pictured on page 86. The length we can manage without any trouble; but the width, taking into consideration how prone to shrink 16 inch boards are, is a little more difficult. If our covers are not seasoned thoroughly, they are very apt to split from end to end, after having the sides nailed as securely as we do it. I would first cut all the boards in two, in the middle, using a measure, to prevent cutting in such a way as to spoil a cover, and then rip off a strip so as to reduce all to 16! inches. This gives us one straight edge, and shortens the boards so we can handle them. If you have no assistant, you can cut them in two once more, and this will enable you to handle them very readily. With the straight edge against the cut off bar, cut your boards up carefully to 20i inches long, or just so as to slip in-the iron frame. If your lumber is seasoned as well as you can get it, you may now bring it to 16 inches width, or so it will just squeeze into the iron frame sideways. After this, it is only to be rabbeted. That you may understand perfectly the purpose of rabbeting and cross nailing I will give you some cuts. You remember that we had 2 inch strips from both sides and ends, when we made the bevels on the hive. Well, four of these strips placed in the iron frame, and nailed, will look about like Fig. II. the nails are to be driven. If the covers are i,you will have a half inch of wood to leave, as shown, after taking out f, to get the shoulder ; but, as much of the lumber will dress more than £, and some of it a full inch, I would plane it just enough to get a smooth surface, and no more. Now supposing you cannot get perfectly seasoned lumber (and, in fact, according to my ideas, the lumber as it comes from the lumber yards is never seasoned as it should be for covers) what shall we do? I will tell you; get out your covers just as I have mentioned, except you will omit rabbeting one edge. Pile the boards up, placing between them the sticks that came out of the hives when we cut the rabbet; or, if more convenient, use pieces of lath, or any strips of an even thickness. Put the sticks close to the ends of the covers, and pile them up clear to the ceiling of your room; the higher the better. Now, when you wish to use some cover stuff, or fill an order, take down as many as you want, and rabbet the remaining edge until the cover justs slips into the frame. NAILING HIVES. We use 6 penny finishing nails, and put four nails in each side all around the hive. Nail the corners securely, first, and drive your nails as close to the corner as you can, without having the nails split out. Never let the point of a nail show itself, under any circumstances, and do not have any splitting or botch work, if it takes you a whole forenoon to nail up a single hive. HOW TO MAKE THE COVEK. Fig. 1 shows the cover board all rabbeted, ready to be pushed into Fig. II. Fig. Ill is a cross section of the cover, and shows how IRON SMOOTH FLAKE FOB DKESSING THE BEVELS TO AN EXACT FIT. To work to good advantage, a pair of iron frames are needed, although you can get along with but one. In your first attempts, it is hardly to be expected that you have been able to get the hive stuff so it will just drive into these frames, and I hope you have been on the safe side, and made your boards a little large, if anything. If such is the, case, you are to have one" of the neat, little, iron, smooth planes to be had so cheaply now a days, and plane off the ends, until they are just a tight fit. The iron frames will draw them up, so that you can hardly see where the joint is. Now nail them as directed, and cross nail. The cross nails HIVE MAKING. 92 HIVE MAKIKG. should come so near" each other, that they almost touch. We nail down through the cover with 4 penny nails, and^cross nail into the end with 6 penny's, as before. You cannot very well get lumber that will make all the covers so as to be weather proof; therefore we sort out the poorest, andjise them for bottom boards. By this means, we have the covers all good, and no lumber wasted. It is for this reason, and that we may have as few separate pieces in our hive as possible, that I advise making the cover and bottom boards all one and the same thing. If you are out of the one, you can use the other, and vice versa. Therefore, the Simplicity hive is nothing but this plain simple body, and the plain simple cover; and, if we make these two pieces just right, we are all right. Since the invention of the mat for covering the frames, we have made the Simplicity hives "with the * corner-joint like the t cut opposite. It presents the same finished appearance as the straight bevel, and, with proper machinery, is little, if any, more work to make. It also makes a stronger corner, when" thoroughly cross-nailed. THE SIMPLICITY LANGSTROTH HIVE. As there are some who insist on having a hive with a permanent bottom board and the old style, Langstroth portico, I have devised such a hive that will take the regular Simplicity forjm tipper story. LANGSTROTH HIVE TO TAKE A SIMPLICITY UPPEB STOBY OK COVER. It will be observed that the sides are prolonged to make the portico; the bottom board is also made to project just 3 inches in front. The sides are made in pairs, and are 23i inches long, by 11 wide, when finished. The back end is made on a mitre, like the Simplicity; to hold the front end firmly, & rabbet is cut into the sides I by I; to hold the bottom boards securely, and to make a neat looking job outside, a rabbet is also cut in both sides and back end. The bottom board runs crosswise, and is made in two pieces. The portico roof extends over, and is nailed on the top edge of the front end board; it also has a lip or projection on its upper back edge, that makes the bevel around the top. By this means, the front end board is simply a plain board 15 inches long, by 81 inches wide, rabbeted at the ends to fit into the side boards. On some accounts, such a hive is desirable, but as it can never be used as a second story, at least, without making holes in the bottom or having the bottom movable, I think I would have the greater part of the hives in the apiary of the usual Simplicity form, both upper and lower story alike. As the entrance is fixed, we are compelled to use the usual 3 cornered movable blocks. COVERS TO HIVES. In the old style L. hive, it has been usual to make the covers to the hives of two pieces. They are tongued and grooved together, of course, but, in our apiary, this kind of covers has made more trouble by leaking, than almost any other. They will leak in time, in spite of you. It is for this reason, that I have used one single clear board for covers. But a good many people want a cover with projections; it is pretty expensive to buy clear lumber for covers more than 16 inches wide. In our locality we can not figure such, at less than $35.00 per thousand. THE STORY 'AND A HALF HIVE. Then what shall we do with people who want a cover that won't leak, and must have it project? Narrow boards, 8 or 10 inches wide, are cheap and plenty, compared with wide, clear stuff, and I have devised the cover to the hive shown above. The ridge board is I stuff, 5 inches wide, and can be HIVE MAKING. 93 HlVE MAKING. grasped easily so as to raise the cover with one hand, when the other is occupied. The other 2 boards are i inch stuff, 6| inches wide; they are driven into the ridge board before nailing. The rest of the cover is i inch stuff, put together like the Simplicity hives. Another item comes in here. A good many winter bees in the Simplicity hives, with but a single story, and the cover is too shallow for a cushion and breathing room above. By making our new cover 5 inches deep, we get room for a cushion and ventilation; and more than all, it will allow of a single tier of section boxes over the frames, so it is, really, a story and a half hive. If we use sections over the frames, under such a cover, no bees must get outside the sections, or they would get mashed when the cover is set down. COMBIKED SHIPPING CASE AND HONEY CRATE FOB STORY AND A HALF HIVE. I have for years thought of a shipping case that could be set right on the hive to be filled, and taken right off the hive and sent to market; but difficulties have always stood in the way, until now. The above has bottom bars to protect and hold the sections, precisely like those on the broad frames, and they are supported by a groove cut along the lowrer edge of the end boards. Now to space these bottom bars as they lay in the grooves, exactly, so as to match the bottom bars of the sections, we use a spacing strip shown in the engraving, below the case. This strip, when pushed clown in place, also holds the separators at just the right height. The sections are closed tops, and when they are all in place, a thin strip is pushed down so as io rest on the top edges of-the separators, and hold the boxes firmly upright, and in place. A strip of glass runs along each side, which allows the apiarist to see how fast the bees are working, by simply raising one side of the cover to the story and a half hive. If the central fections are capped first, separate them in the middle, and Wing them around, so that the finished ones will come next the glass. HOW TO MAKE THE CHAFF HIVE. This is all, except the corner posts, made of cull lumber, which can be purchased at any lumber yard ; we get it for $10. per M. Get it long enough before hand to have it piled up and seasoned, if you possibly can; if you cannot, you must manage to have the stuff piled up so as to season after it is got out; it will season very quickly in these thin narrow strips, and so we often cut it up, unseasoned, when we are behind on orders. Fix your table, as before directed, and cut your whole pile of boards, before being planed, into pieces two feet long. If you do not cut them all so exact, it will not matter a great deal for this hive, as you will presently see. After your boards are all cut up, put on your rip saw, and split them up 3 inches wide; but instead of cutting them square, cut them on about the angle shown below. HOW TO CUT THE STUFF FOR SIDING. If you find any bad knots or shakes, do not split them, but pile them up nicely at one side, to be used as rough bottom boards. This ripping can be done either on the foot power saw or with the Hand Kipper; we use the latter, and I think it does the work more rapidly. To cut the pieces on the bevel, you are to screw a bevel shaped piece on the saw table. PLATFORM .FOR GIVING THE SIDING THE PROPER BEVEL. Two wedge shaped pieces, of which only one is shown at C, are used to give the board the proper inclination; the other one is supposed to be where you see the nail holes, at I). A is where the saw comes up through, and B is a square bar that the edge of the rough lumber is rested against. It is fastened to the table by screws put through the table top from the under side into these pieces 0. With the Hand Ripper, we screw the two pieces fast to the, two light wooden bars that constitute the only wood about the machine. HIVE MAKING. 94 HIVE MAKING. B G The first piece that comes off, will be like A; turn it over, and run it through again, and it will be like B; the next operation is to split each piece, like C. This you will have to do with the Hand Kipper, for the foot power saw would not reach through so far. If you do not split the pieces exactly in the middle, it does not matter, and a very thick one occasionally will be all the better, to give the hive strength without extra expense. You can plane this siding by hand very cheaply, or it may be done on the cigar box planer; if on the latter, you will be obliged to reduce them to a uniform thickness unless you choose to save out the thickest pieces, and plane them afterward with the planer a little higher. Plane only the one side just left by the saw. If you are not going to use this siding at once, pile it up crosswise, as coopers do their staves, until it is thoroughly seasoned and straight. Our chaff hive is built by nailing these pieces of siding to corner posts with planed side outward, of course. As nails have a fashion of drawing out when exposed to the sun, (some carpenters say the sun pulls them out,) we will drive them all from the inside, and then, if "Old Sol" tries to pull them out by the feet, he will have a tough job, and will only draw the heads up tighter. The corner posts that we use are made of solid wood, and are cut from 3 inch plank. The plank should be so clear from knots and shakes, that there will be no danger of the pieces breaking while nailing into them. Cut your plank, which should be as wide as you can get it, into pieces 22 inches long. Kow with the beveling platform that I showed you in hive making, you are to cut out the corner posts in this way: HOW TO MAKE THE CORNER POSTS. You will observe that the saw goes in at each side until the cuts meet, so as to take out pieces like fig. II. After you get them all out, you are ready to nail up the outside of the hive. Lay two of your corner posts, as shown above, on your work bench and have them 2 feet and 2f inches apart. To get these dimensions without measuring, I would nail a couple of strips to the bench just the right distance apart; also a third across the end, that we may always have the hive square and true. The chaff hive is not quite square ; it is 1 inch narrower on the side where the entrance is ; therefore, when you are nailing the back and front, you are to slip a strip of wood 1 inch wide between one of your posts and your stop. Our siding, you remember, is just 2 feet long; well, the pieces on both front and back go clear up into the corners of the corner posts. This will prevent the side strips from coming clear up by I inch, as shown below. Bl EXTERNAL SHELL, AND CORNER POSTS OF CHAFF HIVE. A is the entrance, B, B, B, B, the corner posts, and C, C, C, C, the siding. Now after we have got the siding nailed securely with the beveled edges so arranged as to keep the rain out of the chaff, we will nail in each corner an inch strip, shown at D, D, D, D ; these are put in with heavier nails, and lock the whole structure most securely. As there is no need of uncovering the chaff part when we uncover the hive, we make the cover so as to extend over the interior only, and have a permanent cover over the space containing the chaff. This permanent cover is our next piece of work. Get out some long strips, just as you did the siding, only have them 1 inch wider, preserving just the same bevels on each side. Plane it on both sides down to 7-8, and then cut out a part as shown in the diagram. Fig. 1 shows the piece before taking out the strip, and fig. II, after it is done. You are to cut in J inch at A on the same bevel as the sides, and then 21 at B to meet the other cut. Now turn your cross cut bar at an angle, just as if you were going to make a picture frame, and make a picture frame in reality, of the stuff shown at fig. II. The inside dimensions of the frame must be just 19J by 20i ; you must be very exact about the 19i, for the frames wrill not have the right play, otherwise; that you may get the HIVE MA KING. 95 HIVE MAKING. proper idea, I will give you a diagram of this frame. FRAME THAT HOLDS THE CO VEIL To make the joint water tight at the mitres, a saw cut is made in each end of each piece as shown at A, and after the frame is nailed at the corners, a strip of tin is pushed in. The outside of this frame will probably be a trifle large. This rim, when nailed true and square, is to be fitted to the tops of the corner posts; the posts can be given the proper bevel, with the circular saw, before the siding is nailed on. This bevel is the same as that of the siding. The top pieces of siding are to be of pretty good thickness, that we may nail this rim securely to it, as well as to the posts. It may be well to state here, that the top pieces of siding are nailed on first; 7 pieces, of the dimensions we have given, form the hive. Before nailing in the last piece, you are to cut the entrance in the upper edge. This entrance is to be 8 inches long, by f wide. The cut below will make it plain. Having now completed the outer shell, we will see about the inside. INSIDE OF CHAFF HIVE. This, as well as the outside, is all made of cheap cull lumber. I would, by all means, advise getting out your boards a little wide, and sticking them up until thoroughly seasoned, as I have mentioned before. Cut your stuff in two in the middle, so that you can handle it readily, and then, with the Hand Kipper, rip the boards i inch wider than you need, and cut them up to the exact length. When this is done, and your boards are all piled up square and true as before, you are ready to split them through the middle. It is not necessary that the boards be planed on more than one side, for the back side of all of them is next the chaff, and as the rough surface would tend to impede the circulation of currents of air, I do not know but that I would rather have them unplaned. Neither is it important to have the boards split exactly in the middle ; in fact, one end I had in view, while inventing this chaff hive, was to avoid the necessity of having to be so exact, as we must be with hives where both inside and outside are exposed to view. You see as we go along, that while the in- side dimensions of the hive are to "a dot," the boards constituting it may be of all sorts of thicknesses, and lengths too, or at least a part of them, for nearly all the joints are lap joints. As before remarked, it is very important that the back and front of the hive are at the right distance apart, and this proper distance is 181 inches; to insure this every time, we make the side boards with shoulders as shown below, i by i. ONE OF THE SIDES OF THE INSIDE OF THE CHAFF HIVE. It will be observed that four of these boards are used, two above, and two below, 18i inches from shoulder to shoulder. The width of these boards, when finished, is to be just 91 inches, by about 19i long. We will cut the shoulders on the planed sides, of course, because they come inside of the hive. The ends are of unequal length, for the upper story contains a greater number of frames than the lower. The bottom ones are 14i in. long, and the upper ones, 20i in.; both are 9i in. wide. In the Simplicity hive, we were obliged to cut a rabbet into the upper edge of the end boards ; but with these, we simply nail the tin rabbet directly DIAGRAM OF CHAFF HIVE. on their upper edges. The rim before mentioned, forms the back to those in the upper story, and a strip, nailed on to connect the two stories, forms the back to those in the lower story. This inside work is all made of 1 or I inch stuff. The bottom of the lower story is also made of this same thin stuff, and in nailing it on, it does not matter, if the boards lap over and project at both the sides and ends too. The diagram above, a transverse sectional view HIVE MAKING. HIYE MAKING. of the chaff hive, will, I think, make it all plain. Both the outside and inside are nailed up separately, and then they are put in place, and nailed together, the only points of attachment being the rim which rests on the top edge of the upper story, and the bottom of the lower story, which rests on a couple of strips that are attached to the siding on either side, and to which the bottom is nailed. Let A A represent the siding, B B B B the chaff, and C C C C the light boards that constitute the inner hive. D D is the rim that holds the cover, and E E the cover itself. F is the ridge board, that holds the siding of which the cover is made. G G are strips about li inches square, that support the upper story, and attach it securely to the lower one. The shelf or ledge, formed by making the upper story broader than the lower one, is exactly on a level with the top bar of the lower frames, and therefore the upper tier of frames must hang just I of an inch from these, to prevent, as much as possible, the building of combs between the two. II is the entrance, which is simply a covered passage way from the inside hive, through the chaff, to the outside. A frame is shown in place in the lower story, and the ends of three of them in the upper story, hanging at right angles to those below. J J are two heavy pieces of rough unplaned stuff, that support the bottom of the inside hive. Just below these, is the rough bottom of the hive, which is made of the knotty and shaky pieces that were rejected, when we were getting out the siding. To keep out the dampness of the ground as much as possible, as well as to discourage mice from any attempt to get into the siding, we put a sheet of tawed building paper just under J J, and between them and the rough bottom boards. These rough bottom boards are the last thing put on; when the body of the hive is all finished, it is turned bottom upwards and the chaff filling put in. The chaff may be either wheat or oats; it has been suggested that wheat would be less liable to get damp and settle down so as to be soggy and mould, but we have noticed no such trouble with either kind as yet, and the oat chaff is probably the warmer, because it is softer and more downy, like feathers. The chaff should be packed sufficiently to prevent it from ever settling so as to leave the upper portions of the hive vacant. When the chaff is all nicely filled into the sides, you are to put as much over the bottom as possible and have the tarred paper and rough bottom boards go in, and then the whole is to be securely nailed, both doWn into the strips, J, and through from the siding, into the ends of these bottom boards. Now we are ready for the cover. To contrive a light cheap cover, that would be absolutely water proof, that would allow of being readily lifted with one hand, and still afford a flat place on the top for setting a case of section boxes, or any other article used in the apiary, caused me more hard study and experiment than all the rest of the chaff hive together. There are a great many different pieces to the chaff hive, it is true, but these pieces are all made of cheap lumber, and one kind of pieces is made to answer a great variety of different purposes. For instance, the roof boards of the cover are all sorted out of the same siding that is used for the body of the hive. Before piling this siding away, you are to select all of the straightest and soundest pieces for these covers. For the sake of lightness, we will plane these down to I, or a little less. COVER TO CHAFF HIVE. Where we get hold of very thick stuff among our pile of culls, we can often make 3 roof boards of a piece, thus saving lumber, and time in dressing it down. Now these boards or strips are to be bent in the middle, to get the slope to the roof ; and, to do this, we will make a broad saw cut nearly through each of them, as shown below. ROOF BOARD TO CHAFF HIVE. Make the cut so nearly through, that the board will bend along the line, without trouble. To keep them bent just right, and to make a solid ridge board with the flat place on top, we will get out a piece of i stuff, 221 inches long, and 5 inches wide. Fix a beveled piece against the parallel bar on your saw table, so that you can cut out this board thus: Let A represent the parallel bar, B, the beveled piece screwed to it, C, the ridge board we are making, and D, the dotted lines where we wish to have the saw cut. After going*through on one side, the board is to be turned over, so that the piece, E, is taken entirely out at the second cut. HIVE MAKING. 97 HIVE MAKING. That the siding may make a close joint that will not leak, we groove the edges, and push into them a little trough shaped piece of tin, as shown below. ROOF BOARDS TO CHAFF HIVE. These cuts in the siding are made with a very thin saw, and in such a way as to be least liable to break out. The tin allows the thin pieces of pine to shrink and swell without any danger of checking, and yet no water can, by any possibility, get into the inside of the hive. The tins may be made of the cheap roofing tin, or of scraps that tinsmiths would otherwise throw away. If they should fit so loosely, that there may be danger of their falling out, a slight bend in them will make them stick securely. As the rim that holds the cover is on a bevel, we wish the strip that goes under the eaves, as well as the gable end piece with the ventilating hole in it, to be beveled at their lower edges also ; the former we make of thick pieces of siding, by splitting them in two on the proper bevel. As these are to hold the nails along the eaves, they should be at least f thick. For the gable ends, we adopt a little different line of management, and, as the principle is a very important one, I will take a little space to explain it. Much time is occupied in handling all these little bits of lumber, and to.employ a strong man to handle little bits of pine, and turn them end for end, when he could, without fatigue, handle a dozen or a hundred just as well, is something that should be avoided as much as possible. The same idea was brought out very strongly in making section boxes; bat to make irregular forms is a little more difficult. Even if we can accomplish no more than to have two of the pieces attached, so that the workman can perform two operations on them, while the stuff is right in his hands, it is quite a saving. This gable end piece, you see below. GABLE END TO CHAFF HIVE COVER. You will notice, that each piece has a tapering cut at each end ; that it has a bevel at the lower edge ; and that it has a hole bored through it. To pick it up and lay it down for each of the four operations, especially, if you are one of the awkward kind that have to turn around and stoop over every time they lay a piece down and pick another up, requires a good deal of time. If we should take a piece of 3 inch plank, we could cut the tapers, and bore the holes, in at least six pieces at once, for they need not be over I, and then we could saw off the pieces after all was done. But 3 inch plank is pretty expensive, because there is so little demand for it. If we can buy 2 inch plank at a low figure, it may do to use this, but, even if we do, after boring the holes and cutting the tapers, wre would better cut them in two in the middle first, so as to have about inch pieces, as you will see. Yery likely, it will be best to use your culls, so we will get out a piece of inch stuff planed as thick as it will work, 5 inches wide, by 22£ long. This piece will make 4 gable ends, by running your saw through the dotted lines, as shown below. HOW TO MAKE THE GABLE ENDS. First we take off the corners, A A ; then bore the holes ; next we cut from B to C and from D to E; lastly, split them through the middle, and they are finished all but planing. The ventilating hole should be about 1| inches in diameter, and should be covered with wire cloth, on the inside. It is never safe to omit these ; for a strong colony will exhale so much moisture from the breath of the bees, as to cause drops of water to hang on the roof boards, and large icicles to form in the winter. I have wintered bees in the chaff hives, without the ventilating holes, but was obliged to open them occasionally during very severe weather, to let the roof and cushions dry out. FRAMES FOR HIVES. The frames to fit the hives I have described, are 17| by 91. I took these dimensions from a frame Mr. L. sent me several years ago, in answer to an application to him for a frame of the dimensions he would prefer. Although some of the frames in common use, called the L. frame, differ somewhat from these dimensions, yet the frame will fit the greater number of hives in common use, known as the L. hive. There is some difference of opinion in regard to the comparative merits of frames with metal supporting arms, and those having the top bar prolonged at each end, so as to form a support. I decidedly prefer those with the metal bearing, as being more easily HIVE MAKING. 1 handled, even at the risk of having them slip about once in a while, when we do not want them to. I want a frame so "movable," that it can be picked up at any time, with one hand even, in spite of all the propolis the bees can fasten to its attachments to the body of the hive. The all wood frames have considerably the advantage in cheapness, and they can be got up on short notice, with very little machinery. It is a very important thing to have all our frames, as well as our hives, exact in size, and to insure this, wre have gauges made for each separate part. We formerly used wooden gauges, but after long use, we find there is danger of inaccuracy from the shrinking and swelling by changes of weather, or loosening of joints by use, and we have, therefore, decided on steel gauges, which we make of a cheap carpenters' squares, such as are to be had at almost any hardware store. The stops are made of brass, and are put on with rivets, as there is always more danger of a solder joint giving way, than of a riveted one. The drawing below will make it all plain, I think. GAUGE FOR FRAME MAKING. The plate on the end is put on that end of the square that reads one inch, thus enabling us to read the dimensions in inches, at the same time that we are trying a piece of board to see if the length is right. One side of the square gauges the top bar, and the other side, the bottom bar. The notch in the side gives the length of the end bars. For frames, we use box lumber that costs about $30. per M. A cheaper quality would answer, and we might work cull lumber to quite an advantage, were it not that there would be great danger of bad pieces getting in, and we really need the very best straight grained pine for our frames, both brood and section, that we can get. For the metal corners, the lumber is to be planed just I of an inch ; after trying frames with the bars of almost all widths, 1 think I would prefer this to any other width. Square the end of your board with the cut off bar, and then set the parallel bar at such a distance, that the pieces cut off will be of such length, as to just push in between the stops on your gauge. Bo not say, when you have it nearly right, "That is near enough", but have it just as nice a fit as it can be ; then you can go on cutting up your boards, without any fear of inaccuracy. For metal cornered frames, you have only to cut off two lengths; I HIVE MAKING. the longest for tops and bottoms, and the shortest for ends. If you are making the all wrood frames, the top bars are to be H inches longer than the bottom bar. This allows a projection of f of an inch, for the frames to hang on. This I think as great a length as we ever need, and I do not think it advisable to try to get along with anything less, if we wish to avoid the effects of propolis in bee hive manipulations. A bee can pass freely through an opening of i of an inch, but if it is much less, he is disposed to bridge it across writh propolis ; if it is much greater, combs will be built in the space. For these reasons, comb frames are usually separated from the sides of the hive, about I of an inch. Well, if we do not want the bees to fill up the rabbet with propolis, we must have a channel for them to walk in, about this width; and I outside of the rabbet, added to the f inside, gives us just f f or the projecting arm. I would put the frames together, at the corners, with the grooving saws, such as we use for section boxes. In the I stuff, I would have four grooves and four tenons, as shown below. This work is very rapidly done with four saws having collars between them, to separate them just the right distance. The boards, when cut up into lengths, are then run over them, being held at the right depth by gauging the height of the saw table. Where the four saws are not at hand, this grooving may be done, but of course not as rapidly, with a single saw cutting one groove at a time. To get the distance just right, a blade, or track, is set in the table, by the side of the saw, just large enough for the grooves to slide over. The first groove is cut, by running your boards against the side of the track, as a gauge, and the next, by running the groove on the track, and so on. This method is more liable to inaccuracy than that with the four saws, yet very nice work can be done by means of it, and we are not limited tt any size of stuff, or material. Section boxes, or boxes for a variety of purposes, may be made with this kind of dove tailed corners, with great facility. Great care should be used, to have the stuff held closely down to the table, that it may be all grooved to the full depth. An ordinary saw, with the teeth set very wide, will answer for this grooving, but a thick saw made on purpose, ground thinner in the HIYE MAKING. 99 HIVE MAKING. centre, so that it may be sure to clear well, is much better. Cutter heads will do for a small amount of work, but having only two teeth instead of many like a saw, they are so quickly dull, that I would much prefer the saw. For the metal cornered frames, I would have all the corners made as above; the grooving in the top of the ends is to be made a little deeper, to accommodate the extra thickness of the top bar. The top bars, we rip off 5-16, the ends and bottom bar, 7-32. The bottom bars would do just as well i, were it not that heavy combs are sometimes made to rest on them, as in transferring, etc. Where the frames are made all of wood, I would make them as in the cut shown. If they are made so as to drive together just right, it gives a very stiff frame, and but a single nail is required to fasten the corner. Cars should be taken that the neck on the ends of the top bar is not cut too deep, else the projection may be in danger of breaking off, at the narrow point. The neck should be so made, as to have about 7-16 of the wood left; this will allow the mortices to be just 7-32 deep, and the same in width. We make these with a cutter head, before the boards are cut up. The tool should be nicely ground, that the groove exactly in the centre, and f deep, and is, of course, made in the end of the board before the pieces are ripped off. The top bar is also to be grooved on the under side, its whole length. Below we show you a section of both top and end bar, with the groove to hold the comb guide. may be smooth and sharp, with no ragged edges or anything rough about it. The mortice in the ends of the top bars, \ve make by placing the four grooving saws close together, the washers being left on the out-sides. Cutting in the end of the wood is rather trying work, for both saws and cut-terheads, and they will need sharpening often. Great care should be taken, to have all these joints just right, for the strength and beauty of the frame depends on having them driven up as tightly as may be, without splitting the wood. The comb guide, for both kinds of frames, we make of nice straight grained pine, 9-16 wide, and just thick enough to fill closely the groove cut by one of these grooving saws. This is a little less than i of an inch ; for you will remember that four grooves and four tennons make just I of an inch. The groove is to be As the comb guide is 9-16, and the cut in the end bar t, we have 3-16 left for whole wood in the top bar, as at A, and the table should be so set, as to leave just this amount of wood uncut. Even if the fdn. is fastened in the frames with melted wax, as many do, I would have such a comb guide, because it adds so much to the strength of the frame, and obviates the necessity of having a very heavy top bar. The bees will, in time, build their combs right over such a comb guide, and use the cells above the brood for honey. HOW MANY FRAMES IN A HIVE. You will remember that the width of the Simplicity hive inside, as well as the lower story of the Chaff hive, is just 14i inches. Well, this space is just right for ten frames, bringing them a trifle less than 11 inches from each other, from centre to centre. After we have our frames placed in the hive, and spaced with the eye and fingers, so as to have about the same amount of room for each frame, we are to consider what is to be used to keep the bees down on the frames, and to prevent them from building their combs clear up against the cover, and fastening the latter down with propolis. WHAT TO COVER FRAMES WITH. This is a very important matter, and one that must be carefully attended to, or there will be no end of "troubles." If the bees get up under the cover, they will daub the whole inside with propolis, waxing all joints and crevices, and making it almost impossible to lift the cover without jarring and enraging them. They will also use this space for a loafing room, if no surplus boxes are on, when we want every bee down amid the brood combs. Worst of all, when the cover is replaced, bees will be sure to be in the joints where they will get crushed, and when you have to kill bees in opening and closing your hives, you will very soon discover that there is something radically wrong somewhere. Cloth sheets and quilts have been used for the past few years, and HIVE MAKIKG. 100 HIVE MAKING. in many respects they are far ahead of thi honey boards formerly used. For the pas two years, I have recommended and usec enameled cloth, with a strip of tin folded in the ends. This has given excellent satis faction, but two faults have developed with its use. In time, it gets soft by -the damp ness of the hive, and then the bees gna\\ holes in it as they do in the duck. The nex is that it is hard to make it stay in its place and perfectly close the top of the hive, unless we use the tin ends mentioned; with these it can not be folded up so as to cover a smaller colony, and it is awkward to use with the division1 boards now so generally employed. I have just now (March 1879 devised the mat shown below. MAT FOB COVERING THE FRAMES. The great beauty of it is that while it can not shrink so as to let the bees out at the ends or sides, it can be rolled back, folded smaller, and adapted to the varying sizes of the hive with a division board, even better than any cloth, and in placing it over the bees, we can see through the cracks, so that not a bee is killed. After it is placed so not a bee can get above it, as it is nearly level with the top of the hive, every bee that does not get off, can easily be brushed off and made to go in at the entrance. The strips are of basswood, and are 1-16 by 1 inch. They are woven in a loom, with hard hemp twine, I consider this a great acquisition. In cool weather or in winter, the chaff cushion is always to be used over this mat, for it is not to keep the bees warm, but only to keep them down, and to protect the cushion above it. HOW TO TJSE THE BBOAD FBAMES OF SECTION BOXES. For the one story hives, you have nothing to do, but to just hang the frame of sections in the hive. The separators, of course, will be turned toward the brood, and this will serve to keep the bees from putting pollen in the section combs, as well as to keep the queen out. I have never seen any pollen, or any eggs, carried into a frame of sections, where separators were used. Although you can get nice honey from a one story hive, I would not, as a general s recommend them; because almost i any swarm of bees will very soon need more room, and if it is not furnished, they will be pretty sure either to swarm or to lie idle, for want of it. With the extractor, we can get along very well with one story, for we can extract the honey ; but we cannot well take off the sections, until they are capped over, and when the two frames are full and ready to cap, the bees will have little or nothing to do. This is why I would have a two story hive. If you have the upper story filled with sections, I do not know that there is any particular advantage in having any sections in the lower story at all; for, after the bees once get to working well above, they will, as a general thing, rather neglect the lower ones. Different colonies work differently in this respect, but side storing, unless in hives with taller frames than the L., has been pretty generally abandoned. You will remember that the Simplicity hive is 14i inches wide, and that the broad frames to hold the sections are 2 inches wide; therefore 7 of the latter would fill the hive into about i of an inch. Well, as we wish the tin separators to lie as flat and smooth as possible, we will wedge up in this i inch, to bring the seven frames as closely together as possible, and then, when the wedges are removed, we can get out the first frame of sections without any trouble. As the tops of these frames are tight together, we shall have no occasion to use the sheet of enameled cloth, and this may be laid away until the season of surplus is over. It is true, the bees will get above through this i inch space where our wedges are put, but we will stop this by a thin slip of wood, similar to our comb guides, only a little longer. Only two wedges are required to hold the broad !rames tight up to each other, and these are towards the middle, just opposite the uprights of the section boxes, between the separators and the sides of the hive. The diagram below will illustrate it. HOW TO WEDGE UP THE FBAMES OF SECTIONS. A and B are the wedges. When they are withdrawn, you can pry over and lift out the rame, almost as easily as any brood frame, >nd the operation of taking out the honey is very easy, and a very simple one indeed. HIVE MAKING. 101 HIVE MAKIHG. At first thought, it seems a little singular, that the sections are much easier to take out when filled than when empty; but such is, nevertheless, the case ; for they are then rigid, solid blocks, instead of the frail structures which were put in. PAINTING THE HIVES. After the hive is nailed, the nail heads should all be set in slightly with a suitable nail set, and then I would advise going over the corners and all rough places, with a keen and sharp smooth plane, set so as to cut a very light shaving. After this, rub off all rough places with some sand paper and a block, and you are ready to give it a priming. This priming may be simply boiled linseed oil, or boiled oil and ochre, or something of that sort. Cheap red paint is said to hold better than any other color, but, for the sake of avoiding the consequences of excessive heat, I would avoid all dark colors, even for a priming; for somebody might be careless, and let the paint wear off until the priming showed through, and then, if the heat of the sun should strike right on the hive, the little fellows might be made very uncomfortable, to say the least. I once had a brown hive which got so hot that it melted the combs, and let the honey run out in front. I painted it over white, and had no farther trouble, although I allowed it to remain in the sun as before. I once was quite a friend to a kind of chemical paint, but, since having a larger experience, and ^testing pure white lead by the side of other kinds of paint, I have 'come to the conclusion that the pure lead and linseed oil is much the nicest and most durable, besides being, probably, as cheap, in the long run, as anything else. Instead of putting on a great many coats of paint to commence with, I would paint lightly at first, and then give them another coat, as often as it will improve their looks or durability. Do not go by fits and starts, in fixing up your apiary, but keep fixing all the time, and keep it nice all the time. Perhaps the better way to paint and fix up is to lift the combs out, and set them into a hive all rigged and painted, and then, after that one is fixed, carry it to the next, and so on. This plan is very convenient where the hives need a nail or two, which could not well be put in while it contained bees. I do not think fresh paint is especially offensive to bees, nor do I think new swarms are often driven off by the smell of paint, but! should prefer to have the hives dry, before the bees are put in. I have often painted hives containing bees, 7 • ' without perceiving any bad results, except that the bees sometimes stick fast to the newly painted surface, which is certainly annoying to the poor little fellows, if nothing more. CONCLUDING REMARKS ABOUT HIVES. Work carefully, and avoid mistakes and blunders by carefully measuring, trying, and testing every thing, as you go along. Do not get a lot of hives nailed up, and then discover that the frames will not go in them properly, but have a frame right at hand, and, before you drive a nail, put the frame in place and see if it is right. More than this, be sure that your frame is just right. Many bad blunders have resulted from picking up a frame supposed to be right, but which was found to be a little too large, or too small, in some of its dimensions, after a lot of hives were made to match it. Have a good steel square, and keep it carefully, that it may not get out of true, or get rusty or injured in any way. To test its exactness, lay it on a broad straight edged board, and draw a fine line along the blade of the square, with a keen pointed knife; then reverse it, and see if the knife point runs in the same track. The drawing below will show you how. HOW TO TEST A SQUARE. Let A A represent the board with the straight edge. Do not say, "This edge is straight enough," until you have made it as exact as you can. Lay the square on as at B, and draw the line, D E, with your knife point; now turn it over as at C, and draw a line in the same place, or so near it, that you can readily see if the two are exactly parallel. You can take your board to the hardware store, and pick out a square that Js right, or you can get the one that is nearest right, and then make it right by filing. When you get a square that you know you can put "your trust in", go ahead, but work carefully. Say over and over to yourself, when starting out, "suppose I should find after I get these done, that they are all wrong"; and so measure and try your work, at every step. It is just as easy to cut boards in the right place, as it is to cut them in the wrong one; and it is just as easy to have all the different parts of your work nice and accurate, as it is to waste your time by careless bungling, and then trying HIVE MAKING. 102 HIVE MAKING. to patch up the consequences of your own awkwardness. I know, for I have made a great many awkward mistakes in my life, and I also know, by experience, that one so awkward and careless that he, at times, almost feels as if there was no use of trying to be a mechanic, or hardly anything else, for that matter, can learn to be careful, and to do nice work. I also know the thrill of pleasure that rewards one, after he has successfully fought these besetting sins, and come out triumphant. Once more, be careful ; work slowly, until you know your work is all right; have your tools all nice and sharp; keep everything piled up in neat order; look pleasant, be pleasant, and thank God every day for being a great deal kinder to you than you deserve. SECTION HONEY BOXES. ALL ABOUT MAKTHG THEM, AND SOME OTHER MATTERS. Some of our friends complained last season (1877) because'our sections were grooved a little deeper than the thickness of the stuff; this was done, because, in sawing, we cannot get the stuff all exactly of a thickness, and we were therefore obliged to make the dovetailing deep enough, to take in the thickest pieces, otherwise, we should have the thick pieces increasing the outside dimensions of the box, and this might prevent a nice fit inside.of the large frames. The only remedy was to have the stuff planed to an exact thickness; and although we often thought of this, we as often, decided that they could not be made, nicely planed all over, for one cent each, or less. A few weeks ago, our sawyer startled me, by asking why we could not have a little planer, to take long strips right from the buzz saw, and plane them automatically. Sure enough! Why not V I soon found that there is a little planer made, called a Cigar Box Planer, and ere long, we had one planted just back of the saw. I give you an engraving of it below. CIGAB BOX PLANER. This little machine does its work most beautifully, and requires so little power for the planing of these pine strips, that in the absence of other power, one man with a crank would probably run it without trouble. After we got it well started, our sawyer, who is an intelligent mechanic, exclaimed, "Why, Mr. Hoot, I would almost work for nothing, if I could have machinery that would all run as nicely as that little machine does." The strips, as they come out, are most beautifully smooth, for these small planers, as they come from the factory, are all sharp and in working order, without so much as even furnishing a belt. The best part of it is, the strips are exactly of a thickness. For the usual section boxes, they are sawed about 2 inches in width, or a little more, and in length, to suit your pleasure. To get a fair view of all the points, I shall have to explain a little ; the cheapest shape in which we can get our white pine lumber is inch stuff. Two inch might do, were it not that we cannot get it unless sawed to order, in shape to dress full 2 inches. It is true, we can saw it in strips a little more than 2 inches, and then turn them up edgewise as we do the inch stuff, but 2 inch stuff costs quite a little more than one inch, for the same quality of lumber, and as we use inch lumber for general hive work, I think we had better have our lumber pile mostly inch pine. Very well; now what length of boards would we better purchase V As there is always waste near the ends, I think 16 feet will be safest in general, These 16 feet boards, we will cut up in lengths convenient to handle; if you can handle them cut in two in the middle, it will be quite a saving in lumber and handling, but it may be best to cut them in 3, 4, or even 5 equal pieces, under some circumstances. After the boards are cat up, and put in nice piles conveniently near the saw, we are ready to saw them into strips. For the sides of the section boxes, we wish the strips 2 inches, or a fraction less, but for the top and bottom, they are to be i inch narrower. Therefore, we need an equal number of each width. We are now ready to rip off the thin strips. I think these would better be, when dressed, nearly 3-16 thick, after they are planed; but there comes in a consideration that decides this point, a little further along. We will suppose you have ripped off and planed about 100 of these thin strips; 101 is HIVE MAKING. 103 HIVE MAKING. just the number, to be exact. Shake out the shavings, place the planed surface all one way (we do not want the sections planed on their inner sides, because the bees could not so readily attach their combs) and then screw them up in'screw clamps like the cut below. CLAMP FOB MAKING SECTION BOXES. These clamps are made to compass just 16 inches. You will remember that the frame we use to nail, and gauge, the size of the simplicity hives, is just 16 inches wide ; just bear it in mind. Below, we give you a drawing of the bundle of strips, with a clamp screwed on them, at about every 18 inches. BUNDLE OF STRIPS FOR SECTIONS. Well, this plank as it were, composed of the 101 strips, is to be placed on the saw table, and sawed into bolts or bundles, a little more than 17 inches long, one of the clamps coming near the center of each. Now you are to slip one of the iron gauge frames over the bolt, and loosen the clamp, until it springs out securely into the frame, as below. BOLT OF STRIPS READY FOR PLANING THE EDGES. These bolts after being all "hooped" and piled up in a nice square pile, are ready to be planed, that the edges of the sections may be smooth, and brought to an exact thickness; you see we are going to have nice accurate work, even if we do commence with rough lumber. Our cigar box planer is hardly large enough to plane these bolts, we therefore use what is called the 18 inch Lilliputian, shown in the following cut. These small planers have astonished us by the beauty and accuracy with which they do their work, and the small amount of power with which they may be run. Our machinist said he did not think we could plane a 16 inch board, with a 4i horse power engine, ' but with only 40 Ibs. of steam, we cut a full i inch from the hardest and knottiest board we could find, and the planer did not even slack its motion. As the machine cost us», all belted and ready for work, only $70.00, we were very agreeably astonished. A 2 horse power engine would run the planer very well, if a light cut at a time was made. LILLIPUTIAN PLANER. After the tops and side pieces are all planed to the exact thickness you wish, you are to put 4 of the clamps on each bolt, so spaced that you can run your saw between them, cutting off bundjes of 4i inch pieces. These are now to be run over the gang of grooving saws and they are finished. BUNDLE OF PIECES FOR SECTION BOXE3, AS THEY LEAVE THE SAWS. These bundles each contain 101 pieces. I would insist on this exact number, to save mistakes that will creep in, if you have any odd number ; for the figuring with fractional parts of a hundred necessary to put up an order, may amount to more than the goods are worth, and even then, expensive mistakes will happen. Last season, a beekeeper away in Iowa informed us, just about swarming time, that his box of 1000 sections was lacking either sides or tops, and it cost us several dollars to make the matter straight, express and all. Jxcfw if we always have 101 in a bundle—the odd one is to be sure to make good count—and then make our packing boxes so that 20 bundles will just fill them, our shipping clerk cannot well make a wrong count. They are put up ready to ship in boxes of 500 each. But he may give us too many tops, and not enough bottoms V That is true, and it reminds me, that the pieces for the tops are to have a thin saw HIVE MAKING. 104 HIVE MAKING. cut exactly in the center, the whole length before they are screwed up in the bundles. Well now, to fix it so he can not make a mistake, we will put in each of the bundles of narrow pieces, 51 grooved, and 50 without the grooves,- Tlien, in packing, he is to get 10 bundles of the wide side pieces, and 10 bundles of the narrow ones, and the packing boxes are to be made so as to hold just these and no more. As to the thickness of the stripy I would set the planer so that 101 pieces just, fill the 16 inch frame when screwed up close enough to hold. You can tell this best by trying, and after you get yomr planer just right, make a mark, so that you can set it in just the same place again. I said the width of the strips should be a little less than 2 inches; we want them so that 7 of them close up side by side, with the 7 tin separators between them, will just make 14 inches. The Simplicity hive is 14i inches inside, and we shall therefore have the i inch to wedge up the frames of sections. When they are to be removed, take out the two wedg-ea and the first frame can be lifted out easily. The tops and bottoms of the sections are i inch less than the sides. ther on. The broad grooves in the side bars, are for the purpose of bringing the tin separators into just the right place, and for letting them in flush with the wood, that the frames may come up tight. Where the tin comes between the frames, and separates them but a trifle, the bees will fill in the crack with propolis. We wish to stop all this so far as we can. The cut of the frame below will give you an idea of the way in which the separators are put on. BBOAD FRAME TO HOLD 8 SECTIONS, AND TIN SEPARATORS. The tin is so cut, that when a $ fold is made on each end, it can be just snapped into the notches at A and B. They can be used without tacking, but those we>hip, are j tacked fast with four slender brads. The i tin should be stretched on the frame, to prevent its bulging, and making depressions and elevations in the comb honey. The shallow notches are very quickly made in the bolt of end bars, with a common rabbet plane. To guide it in the exact spot, and to have it cut the notches of the proper width, a frame of strips of board is placed over the bolt which guides the plane. ONE POUND SECTION BOX COMPLETE. The cases for holding the sections, as well a& the broad frames, are made with the same tools, and much in the same way. Instead of 101 in a bolt, we have just 50, so they are twice as thick as the section stuff. The bottom bar is made exactly like the bottom bar of the sections, grooving and all. The top and sides are the thickness of a 8h6ft of tin wider than the sides of the sections, This makes them come tight against each other, when wedged up in* the hive, Below, we show you a bundle of fin-top bars, and also one of the side bars. BITHBLB OF TOP BARS. BUNDLE OF END BARS. The grooves in the sides of the top bars, and the one in the ends of the side bars, are cut with a Cutter Head, to be described fur- FRAME FILLED WITH SECTIONS OF HONEY. A great many, at first view, ask why we do not use solid plank, and rip off the strips after having done the grooving, etc. The great reason is, that we should be obliged to rip off these little pieces one at a time, and then handle them singly to plane, and tie up. With the plan I have given, \ve rip and plane about 25 pieces in a strip ; when bundled up, we cut off 100 at once. This means, 100 cuts one way, and 25 the other, 125 in all, make 2500 pieces; by the other plan, the workman would have to make 2500 movements. This system of working in wood can be used in making boxes and frames of almost every description, and for a great variety of wood work, where great numbers of pieces are wanted exactly alike and at a very low figure. HIVE MAKIKG, 103 HIVE MAKING. Kow, about grooving the ends of the pieces, or the dovetailing, as it is frequently called. A year ago, I told you how to saw one or two grooves at a time, by means of a steel tr:ack parallel with the saw, on which the first groove runs as soon as it is sawed, as a guide for the rest. This plan does very well, but it is slower, and not as accurate, as when we have a gaiig of 8 saws to cut the whole number at once. The saws we use are 41 inches in diameter, and about 3-32 in thickness. They are run by steel washers between'them, that gauge the tightness with which the sections fit together. If they are too loose, a washer of thin paper put between them will make them tighter. The saws are sharpened like a rip saw, but they have no set. They get dull very quickly, for cutting constantly in the end of the wood is very severe on saws. A 3i or 4 inch belt will be required to run these saws, and the pulley should be not less than 31 inches in diameter. The shaft should be about 1 inch in diameter, and should run in broad strong boxes ; it may be t in., where the sawrs go on. As these saws must cut always the same width, exactly, it is best to run them without set; and to make them "clear" in this shape, we have them ground thinnest in the center. Such saws 41 inches in diameter are worth about $2.00 each; a steel washer 50c more; and a suitable mandrel and boxes $10.00. Therefore the whole outfit, with 8 saws, will cost about $30.00. I confess, 1 am not very well pleased with any of the grooving arrangements I have ever used. They answer very nicely at first, it is true, but they need so much filing or grinding, that it is quite a task. They all work nicely running with the grain, or a-cross the grain, but cutting into the end of a block seems to be a different matter. If we wish grooves and tenons more than i, say 3-16, the Bafnes Cutter Head is an improvement. These require sharpening frequently, it is true, for they are like a saw with but two teeth; but they clear so nicely, it is really a pleasure to wrork with them. Perhaps I should say, when they are in proper cutting order, for neither a saw, cutter, nor any thing else is pleasant to work with, unless it is sharpened just as it should be. It is no use to say you cannot sharpen a saw, for you must do it, or you are not fit to be a bee-keeper. Perhaps I can help you a little. PUTTING CIRCULAR SAWS IN- ORDER. We will take the Cutter Head for an illustration, for it embodies nearly all the principles involved. CUTTER HEAD FOR GROOVING SECTION BOXES. The point or spur, D, is of course to cut a little ahead of the chisel shaped cutter, C, and is to gauge the exact width of the groove, while C follows after, and takes * out a shaving of wpod. Now suppose the tool be so carelessly ground that the heel, B, -is higher, or rather farther from the hole in the centre than the cutting edge, C; lti»-very plain that the heel would only rub on the wood, get hot, and make things smokef without doing any cutting at all. At about this stage, the operator of the foot-power saw is in danger of losing his temper; especially, if he has tired himself out, and worked himself into a perspiration, without, stopping to examine into the matter. To illustrate, I will give a letter that Barnes Bro's wrote us, after one of our customers had complained of his Cutter IJead. We mail you this A. M. the cutter-head that Mr, - returns by our request, for our examina- tion. He has ground it, or sharpened It, from tlici" outside, and spoiled it of course. It should be ground or sharpened from the inner edge. Please put it on the saw and you will see that the edge is ground down so that the part back will not let it cut; hence the jumping he speaks of. You will also see that it; has never been sharpened on the inner edge, the temper color has not been removed. We would as soon tell a man not to hitcb to the tongue of a wa^op, after selling him one, as tell him not to grind these cutters on .the outer edge. You will find, on grinding back and allowing the edge to be the highest, as it was originally, that this same cutter will beat the best saw (especially when gauged), euttet, or groover you can get. We like fair play, especially when things are so plain as to need no explanation! If you have time, we would like you to write him, and after grinding the cutter properly, return it to him to convince him. W. F. & JOHN BARNES. Roekford, 111., Sept. llth, 1877. That the above is somewhat harsh* I am aware, but I have given it you to show that I think there is blame on both sides. Our friend was thoughtless, it is true> but had the cutter been sent him, ground just as it should be, at first, he would have succeeded and been pleased; and if it afterward get out of "rig," he would have known the fault was not in the construction of the implement. I have purchased much machinery, and I am sorry to say, but little of it has been in really nice working trim when first received. The planers I have men^ tioned were a pleasant surprise in that respect, for they were almost as sharp and keen as a razor, and every part was as carefully in order as if the maker had fitted it up for his own use. If all kinds of machinery were sent out in just this shape, it would mve ever and ever so much trouble and bother, HIVE MAKING. 108 HIVE MAKING, and hard words and feelings all round. I know it costs money to do this, and I know it is hard to find a man who will take pride in having everything just right, no matter what the cost may be; but it should be done. There will be no difficulty in getting a price to cover all expense, after the work has once earned a reputation. The Cutter Head was received, as it was stated. The blue on the steel showed that no file or stone had ever touched it on the inner edge at A, but our friend had ground the outside, in the manner stated. I took the tool to one of our hands who runs saws, explained the matter, and desired him to fix and try it. As it did not cut very well, I stopped it and looked, and behold, he had not even taken the blue from the steel on the inside. Friend Barnes, I fear there are a great many thick headed people in this world, and I sometimes have reason to think I am uchiefest" among them. Then what shall we do V I guess we shall have to make everything very plain, and I guess our tools would all better be sharpened just right, before they are sent out, and then purchasers will certainly know how they should be. Messrs. Barnes Brothers have just sent us a pair of their improved Cutter Heads. They are of much nicer finish than their old ones, and there has been some grinding done on the points of the knives; but neither of them are ground as they should be to make the best speed in cutting. I think the gentlemen will excuse these criticisms, for I have always found them very ready to adopt any improvement, or suggestion I may have made, if a good one. We owe them a vote of thanks already, for having made such great reductions on the prices of almost all kinds of foot-power machinery. The spurs on the cutters sent, were too long, and they were of such shape that the bloel^ of wood was shaken while being grooved; when they are made so as to be thin sharp blades, cutting about the thickness of a sheet of paper into the wood, in advance of the chisels, with the steel ground back so as not to bump or rub against the sides of the finished groove, your block will stand as steady as if no cutting was being done, and your groove will be beautifully smooth and clean. Best of all, so little power will be required to do the work, that you will hardly know the tool is cutting. I know, for I have just stopped my writing an hour, to be sure I could make tftem go. As I have said before, we use saws instead of these cutters, because, with the constant work we have for them, they would require sharpening so often. A saw has 50 teeth or more, where these tools have but two, to do the work. When I have occasion to use the Foot Power Saw, I almost invariably find it needs oiling. I cannot afford to waste my strength, in trying to run a saw that does not run free. I found to-day, that some rubbish had been allowed to get under the treadle, so that it did not come clear down. When this was fixed, I found the hickory spring did not bring the treadle clear up. After^I had turned the spring over, the treadle came * clear up promptly, and I could get up a speed that would make a cutter, saw, or any thing else "hum." It really makes me nervous, to see one who knows what the saw can do, try to work by giving the treadle a , series of short stamps, as if it were an unruly sewing machine. If you are going to spin a top, you must draw off the cord, with a "full arm movement," and if you are going to do work with the Barnes saw, you must draw off the strap from the fly wheel in the same way; let the treadle come up as far as it will, and then send it clear down to the floor. If you practice doing this, you will very soon, not only have the whole machine under your thumb, but you will have it under your foot, which is still better. You are now all right, if your saw is sharp, and well set. Kememberthe extreme points of the teeth are to do the work, ind no power can be spared in making the saw rub or squeeze through the lumber. No part of the saw should ever touch the lumber, except these extreme points, and they are to be of such shape, and so disposed, that they pare off just enough to let the saw through, and nothing more. If you stand a chisel straight up on a plank, and draw it across it, it may scratch the wood some, but it will not cut it smoothly. If you try pushing it forward at different angles, you will find there is a certain position in which it will make a smooth cut. This is about the angle we wish to give the teeth of a rip saw. There is a rule for getting this pitch, which you will understand from the diagram below. SAW IMPBOPERLY FILED. PROPERLY FILED. HIVE MAKING. 107 IIIYE MAKING. Let H represent the center of the saw, and F the circumference; G is a line drawn just midway between the center and circumference. Now, if a straight edge is held against the under side of the tooth, it should lie on the line G. Hold your try square on the under side of the tooth of your rip saw, and you can soon see if the teeth are of the right pitch. On the other side you will see some teeth with a wrong angle. Some of them' would carry a line toward the center of the saw, and one of them, would go past the center on the other side. You need not say no one ever did as bad work as that, for it is not many years since I complained to Mr. Washburn that my saw would not cut well, and he, with a straight edge showed me just how badly I had been doing. I had commenced in a hurry, and had filed the saw just to make it do a little for the time being ; I hud filed both top and front of the teeth to get them to a point, "real quick.'1 Filing a saw on the top of the teeth is a fearful waste of time, files, and especially saws. Perhaps I can give you some faint idea of the matter from the cut below. HOW SAWS ABE WASTED, BY IMPROPER FILING. Let A be the point of the tooth when the saw is new, and C, the point where it would be after having been used for;a certain amount of work, the filing having all been done on the under side of the tooth so as to leave the line A C just as it was when it was made that is", it has been untouched by the file, and has only worn away, in actual cutting on the wood. The saw has been reduced in this way by this amount of work, exactly from D to E. Bear this in" mind. Now suppose we have done the sharpening by filing the top of the tooth; in getting the same amount of cutting edge, we should file down from A to B. This would reduce the size of the saw from D to F, instead of from D to E. For filing these small saws from 6 to 10 inches in diameter, we need a file made at just the proper angle like this cut. The broad side of the file is to be laid on the top of the tooth; it is never to be used for cutting downward, but only to preserve the shape and angles of the top of the tooth, while the cutting is to be done from the un- der side of each tooth, the top of the tooth being made while sharpening the one just after it. So much for the shape of the tooth; our saw must be set, or it will not clear itself through the lumber, and for this purpose, we have found the saw set shown below, as good as anything for circular saws. You can get them at your hardware stores, for about 75c. SAW SET FOR CIRCULAR SAWS. The thumb screw gauges the distance at which the tool goes over the tooth, and then bringing the handles together easily and safely bends the tooth j ust where it should be—near the point. The engraving is full size, but the whole tool is about twice the length shown. The diagram below will give you an idea of the purpose of setting saws. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SETTING A SAW. You will observe that we depend on the little points, A and B, to make a path along the dotted lines, for the blade. If these points get worn off, the saw will pinch, and a great part of the power will be consumed in making it squeeze through the wood. If your saw does not cut easily, this is very likely the trouble. If your lumber is unseasoned or tough, you will need much more set than if you have dry clear tender lumber. Of course we wish to get along with as little set as we can consistently, for the more wood we cut out, the greater is the power required. Now, another consideration comes in. If we do not set the teeth all alike, and it is almost impossible to do this with any saw set, on account of the tendency of some teeth to spring more than others, we shall have occasionally a tooth sticking out more than the rest; this causes much friction, and makes our lumber look bad with grooves ploughed in it at intervals. For large saws, a side file is used, but for our work, I think we can level off the points very well with an oil stone. Lay,the stone on your saw table, against the side of the HIVE MAKIHG. 108 HIVE MAKIHG. saw, and turn the saw backward by hand. How t>e sure you do not trim the points too much, and that you do not hold your stone so as to make the points wedge shaped. When done rightly, your saw should cut 1 • smoothly and easily, and the stuff should look almost as if it were planed. In the drawing, I have given about the tight angle for the face of the tooth. The point should be almost square, like the end of a chisel, but as the outside corner has by * far the greatest amount of work to do, it *stould be kept a trifle higher. If you give j point .of the tooth a very sharp bevel, the 4«aw will leav^apoint in the wood this, at A^ and if th&saw * fs erdwilid, the teeth will sprint somewhat, as sli^wm raf ffie dark , -Hues, making a great amount of friction, and rough and unsightly work. Have plenty of good files at hand, and touch up the teeth of your saws often, if you wish to accomplish the most, with the least amount of hard work. The above directions are all for rip saws. A cross cut saw is filed with a 3 cornered file, and needs but few directions different from those already given. As it is always used across the grain, it will work best to have it sharpened so as to leave the point A, as shown in the cut, lk>r this will break off itself. The outer points of the teeth are to be kept very sharp, and are to be leveled up with the oil stone, so they all cut in the sam« path* The saw must also be set enough to clear itself, in all kinds of lumber. If you wish to cut up boards that are not perfectly seasoned, you will need to set your saw accordingly. You can, with the Barnes saw, cut off a foot board at one clip, if everything is all right. Ours is seldom in order to do this, I know, but if I were going to use it, I would keep it in just «uch order. The grooving saws for section boxes are to be Sharpened like the rip saws. How I know from past experience, that a great many of you will say you can not invest in all the machinery I have described, but that you would still like to make your own hives, section boxes, &c., having plenty of time in the winter. Well, I think I can *do something, for even this class. Wait and see. HOME MADE SECTION BOXES. Setofe of our friends, among whom is Prof. Cook, have succeeded very well, with section boxes madfe of the thin veneer used for strawberry boxeSi The stuff is simply fold* ed around a square stick of wood, of just the size you wish your section frames. The ends are fastened by tacks, which are quickly clinched,,by driving the points against a piece of iron or steel, set in the wooden stick at the proper place. These boxes are of a necessity of the same width all round, and therefore I can hardly see how the bees can get in, unless the frames holding them are hung a little distance apart. If we do this, how shall we use the separators? I am sure I do not know, unless we have our honey bulging outside of the wood; in this case, we could not pack them in a shipping box, nor set the sections up close together; they are also rough and unsightly. The bottom bars might be trimmed narrower with a chisel, or something of that sort, but this would not give a neat accurate job, nor could it be done as cheaply as in the sections I have described. H. A, Prudden, of Ann Arbor, Midi., uses a machine for making the dovetailing on sections, one piece at a time, which I have concluded to give, with some improvements and changes that our engraver devised. 'HOME MADE" MACHINE FOR SECTION BOXES. He has given us a side view, and a front view of the machine, and I am sure I need not tell you that putting your foot on the treadle brings down the gang of chisels, with great power. This gang of chisels is shown at figures 3 and 4, and any blacksmith should be able to make them for you, by looking at the illustrations. Fig. 2 shows a similar piece of iron or steel, to be used for a bed-plate for the strips composing the section box. This bed-plate has, two pieces screwed on the upper side, in such a way that they may be adjustable at different dis- HOffEY COMB. 109 HONEY COMB; tances from the chisels. You will bear in mind that the chisels, when cutting, will have quite a tendency to crowd the pieces, and this must not be allowed, or it might endanger breaking the cutters. These stops are to be adjustable, for the purpose of making different sized section frames. Fig. 6 shows how the gate that holds the chisels is made to work freely but surely, up and down. Fig. 5 shows how the end of the lever, C, is made to work in the gate. Figure 7 shows the finished end of a section piece. Friend P. cuts just the number of mortises shown, in a piece 2 inches wide. Is it not an ingenious machine V Why not use this in place of the saws, do you ask? Well, because it is too slow, and cannot well be made as nice and accurate. Friend P. says he can cut 4 in a minute ; with the gang of saws in good order, our boys should cut a whole bundle of 100, in a minute. You need not be discouraged at this ; running a shop full of machinery is very expensive, and the profits must be pretty large to cover expenses. I have no doubt that you could do nice work, and make $3 or $4.00 per day, witli the machine friend Prud-den has described. If there are not beekeepers all round you who would buy the work, there very soon will be if you are a go ahead bee-keeper. Good nice work is what advertises business. HOXfZSlT COXYXB. Every body knows that the cells of the honey comb are 6 sided, and I presume most people know why they are 6 sided. If they were square, the young bee would have a much more uncomfortable cradle, in which to grow up, and it would take a much greater space to accommodate a given number of bees. This last would, of itself, be a fatal objection; for to have the greatest benefit of the accumulated animal heat of the brood, they must be closely packed together. This is not only the case with the unhatched bees, but with the bees of a whole colony in winter; when each bee is snugly ensconced in a cell, they occupy less room than they could by any other arrangement. If the cells were round, they could be grouped together much in the same way as they are now; viz., one in the centre, and 6 all around it, equally distant from the central one, and from each other, like the cut, in the figure, A; but even then, the circles * will leave much waste room in the corners, that the bees would have to fill with wax. At B, we see the cells are nearly as comfortable for the young bee, as a round one would be—of course I mean from our point of view, for it is quite likely that the bees know just what they need a great deal better than we do—and, at the same time, they come together in such a way that no space is left to be filled up at all. The bees, therefore, can make the walls of their cells so thin that they are little more than a silky covering, as it were, that separates each one from its neighbor. It must also be remembered that a bee, when in his cell, is squeezed up, if we may so term it, so as to occupy much less space than he otherwise would; and this is why the combined animal heat of the cluster is so much better economized in winter, when the bees have a small circle of empty cells to cluster in, Avith sealed stores all around them. B A WHY THE CELLS OF THB HOHEY COMB ABB MADE 6 SIDED. I But, my friends, this is not half of the ingenuity displayed about the cell of the bee. These hexagonal cells'must have some kind of a wall or partition between the inmates of one series of cells, and those in the cells on the opposite side. If we had a plane partition running across the cells at right angles with the sides, the cells would have flat bottoms which would not fit the rounded body of the bee, besides leaving useless corners, just as there would have been, if the cells had been made round or ^square. Well, this problem was solved in much the same way, by making the bottom of.the cell of three little lozenge shaped plates. In the figure below we give one of these little plates, and also show the manner in which three of them are put together to form the bottom of the cell. HOW THE BOTTOM OF THE CELL IS MADE. How, if the little lozenge plates were square, we should have much the same arrangement, but the bottom would be too sharp pointed, as it were, to use wax with 8 HONEY COMB. 110 HONEY COMB. the best economy, or to best accommodate the body of the infantile bee. Should we, on the contrary, make the lozenge a little longer, we should have the bottom of the cell too nearly flat, to use wax with most economy, or for the comfort of the young bee. Either extreme is bad, and there is an exact point, or rather a precise proportion that the width of this lozenge should bear to the length. This proportion has been long ago decided to be such that, if the width of the lozenge is equal to the side of a square, the length should be exactly equal to the diagonal of this same square. This has been proven, by quite an intricate geometrical problem ; but a short time ago, while getting out our machine for making the fdn., I discovered a much shorter way of working this beautiful problem. In the figure above, let A B C D represent the lozenge at the bottom of the cell, and A C the width, while B D is the length of said lozenge. Now the point I wish to prove is, that A C bears the same proportion to B B, that the side of a square does to the diagonal of the same square. THE MATHEMATICS OF THE HONEY COMB. Suppose we have a cubical block, E B C G F, and that we pile small blocks on its sides as shown, so as to raise pyramids of such an inclination that a line from any apex to the next, as from A to D, will just touch the edge of the cube, B C. Now A C B B is the geometric lozenge we are seeking. Its width, B C, is equal to one side of the square, E B F H, for it is one side of the cube. How to prove that A B is equal to the diagonal, E F, we will use the diagram below. A< Let E B F II represent the cube, and the dotted lines, the pyramids. If the pyramids are so made that the line, A B, is a straight, continuous one, it is evident, by a little reflection, that the angles, A and B, will be right angles. If this is so, A B is exactly equal to E F, the point we were to prove. Now, referring to the former figure, if we should go on building these pyramids on all sides of the cube, we will have the beautiful geometrical figure called the rhombic dodecahedron; it is so called, because it is a solid figure having 12 equal sides, and each side is a rhomb, or lozenge, such as we have described. Where the obtuse angles of three of these rhombs meet, as at C, we shall have the exact figure of the bottom of a honey comb cell. A picture of the geometrical solid we have mentioned, is given below. RHOMBIC DODECAIIEDKON. How does it come that the bees have solved so exactly this intricate problem, and know just in what form and shape their precious wax can be used, so as to hold the most honey, with the very least expenditure of labor and material? Some are content with saying that they do it by instinct, and let it drop there ; but I believe God has given us something farther to do, than to invent names for things, and then let them drop. By carefully studying the different hives in a large apiary, we see that not all of them build comb precisely alike, and not all colonies are equally skilled in working. wax down to this wonderful thinness. Some bees will waste their precious moments— and wax^-in making great, awkward lumps HOKEY COMB. Ill HONEY COMB. of wax; coarse, irregular cells ; crooked, uneven comb ; etc., with very bad economy either for the production of brood, or for the storing of honey; while others will have all their work so even and true, and so little wax will be wasted, that it is wonderful to contemplate the regularity and system, with which the little fellows have labored. Now, it does not require any great amount of wisdom, to predict that the latter would, in a state of nature, stand a far better chance of wintering than the ones that were wasteful and irregular in their ways of doing things. If this be the case, those queens whose progeny were best laborers, most skillful wax workers, as well as most energetic honey gatherers, would be most sure to perpetuate themselves, while the others would, sooner or later, become extinct. I have found more of a tendency in bees to sport, or to show queer peculiarities, than in any other department of the animal or vegetable kingdom. They vary in color, in shape, in size, in disposition, in energy; and almost every colony, if studied closely, will be found to have some little fashion or way of doing things, different from all the rest in the apiary. Now, when we take into account the fact that many generations can be reared in a single summer, we see how rapidly, by fostering and encouraging any desirable trait or disposition, the bees may be molded to our will. The egg that is laid by a queen to-day may, by proper care, be made to produce a queen laying eggs of the same kind herself, in the short time of only 25 days, as I have explained heretofore. Well, if we should pick out a queen whose progeny made the thinnest comby and rear others from her, doing the same thing for several generations, we would probably get bees whose combs would break down by the weight of the honey. In a state of nature, this extreme would correct itself, as well as the other; but the point I wish you to see is right here ; geometrical accuracy in the shape of the cells can never be over done, and can only be reached by absolute perfection; and this absolute perfection, the bees have been constantly aiming at through endless ages. Is it anything strange, my friends, that the bees have got the honey comb pretty near right by this time? I will give you a little story, and one which has been very interesting to me, from page 150, Vol. II, American Bee Journal. It a single cell be isolated, it will be seen that the sides rise from the outer edges of the three lozenges above mentioned, so that there are of course six sides, the transverse section of which gives a perfect hexagon. Many years ago, Maraldi, being struck with the fact that the lozenge-shaped plates A 70°32' 109°28' 70°32' 70°33' always had the same angles, took the trouble to measure them, and found that in each lozenge the large angles measured 108^28', and the smaller 70°83'v the two together making 180°, the equivalent of two right angles. He also noted the fact that the apex of the three sided cup was formed by the union of three of the greater angles. The three united lozenges are seen in the figure above. Some time afterward, Keaumur, thinking that this remarkable uniformity of angle might have some connection with the wonderful economy of space which is observed in the bee-comb, hit upon a very ingenious plan. Without mentioning- his reasons for the question, he asked Kosnig, the mathematician, to make the following calculation: Given a hexagonal vessel terminated by three lozenge-shaped plates, what are the angles whicM would give the greatest amount of space with the least amount of material? Kcenig made his calculations, and found that the angles were 139°26' and 70°34', almost precisely agreeing with the measurements of Maraldi. The reader is requested to remember these angles. Reaumur, on receiving the answer, concluded that the bee had very nearly solved the difficult mathematical problem, the difference between the measurement and the calculation being so small as to be practically negative in the actual construction of so small an object as the bee-cell. Mathematicians were naturally delighted with the result of the investigation, for it showed how beautifully practical science could be aided by theoreti-al knowledge; and the construction of the bee-cell became a famous problem in the economy of nature. In comparison with the honey which the cell is intended to contain, the wax is a rare and costly substance, secreted in very small quantities, and requiring much time and a large expenditure of honey for its production. It is therefore essential that the quantity of wax employed in making the comb should be as little, and that of the honey which could be stored in it as great, as possible. For a long time these statements remained un-controverted. Anyone with the proper instruments could measure the angles for himself, and the calculations of a mathematician like Kcenig would hardly be questioned. However, Maeiaurin, the well-known Scotch mathematician, was not satisfied. The two results very nearly tallied with each other, but not quite, and he felt that in a mathematical question precision was a necessity. So he tried the whole question himself, and found Mural-di's measurement corre